Xiaomi unveils Kunlun architecture and picks NVIDIA's Thor for its new SUVs
The Sky Nomad range-extended SUVs run Xiaomi's assisted driving on a 700-TOPS NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor chip rather than in-house silicon, according to Chinese media reports.
Xiaomi presented its “Kunlun” vehicle architecture and opened pre-sales of the Sky Nomad N90 Max and N70 Max, range-extended SUVs priced from RMB 259,900, according to Chinese media reports.
The architecture bundles three subsystems — a flat-floor vehicle platform, a range-extension powertrain, and a full-domain safety structure. The assisted-driving choice drew the most attention: Xiaomi HAD runs its XLA cognitive model on a 700-TOPS NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor chip, standard across both models, rather than on in-house silicon of the kind BYD, NIO and XPeng have poured billions into. Named suppliers include Bosch for brake control and Hesai and RoboSense for lidar.
While rivals argue that owning the chip is owning the destiny, Xiaomi — a company that designs smartphone silicon — chose to buy its automotive compute. The divergence keeps the build-versus-buy question genuinely open.
Source: Sina Tech (report) · First reported by CarNewsChina