The new U.S. sanctions on Chinese AI and supercomputing sectors could slow the development of autonomous vehicles in China, according to DigiTimes Asia.
Experts say that the majority of commercial autonomous vehicles in China are equipped for Level 2 automation. Many manufacturers are ready to introduce more advanced systems, but the government has not approved rules for their operation.
Analysts expect that China could find a solution domestically and develop the autonomous-vehicle industry. However, sources in the supply chain say that the operation of robocars is closely tied to cloud services, data centers, 5G and more.
The U.S. ban on the export of high-performance Nvidia and AMD chips directly affects the infrastructure cited above. Therefore manufacturers must first address this issue in order to lay the groundwork for autonomous cars at Level 3 automation and above.
Among the 31 companies on the sanctions list are Chinese firms involved in auto-component inspection. Since future cars are described as mobile high-performance computers, Washington is expected to curb both domestic and foreign intellectualisation of transport, experts said.
Supply‑chain sources acknowledged that manufacturing automotive chips can be achieved with mature processes such as 40–90 nm. If the automotive sector settles on 28 nm, China would have a chance to substitute American products with its own. However, future restrictions could threaten that possibility.
Although China has mastered the 28-nm process, chip quality still does not meet automotive industry standards. This is likely due to stricter durability, reliability and safety requirements. As a result, automotive chips remain heavily dependent on imports, experts note.
Local media reports indicate that China’s share of microcontrollers in the global market stands at about 1%, and IGBT and memory chips account for less than 10%. This likely also signals a strong dependence on imported chips.
In October, the U.S. government imposed new restrictions on the supply of AI chips to China.
In September, Nvidia and AMD were banned from selling processors for supercomputers and AI workloads to Chinese firms.
In the same month, experts suggested that China would quickly create an alternative to American technologies.
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