The Chinese electrical car shaper BYD presents its models astatine the Open Space Area during the IAA Mobility successful Munich, Bavaria, Germany, connected September 12, 2025.
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BYD has a backup program if it gets chopped disconnected from the Nvidia chips it presently uses successful its cars, a apical enforcement astatine the Chinese electrical carmaker told CNBC connected Tuesday.
Stella Li, enforcement vice president astatine BYD, said the institution had not received immoderate directive from the Chinese authorities to halt utilizing Nvidia chips — but if it did, it has a program B.
"Everybody has a backup. BYD has [a] backup," Li told CNBC's Dan Murphy.
Li declined to grow connected what the program is, but she pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic during which determination was a planetary shortage of semiconductors which severely affected the car sector. BYD had "no issue" astatine the clip due to the fact that it developed a batch of its exertion in-house, helium said, truthful it was capable to root alternatives quickly.
Indeed, BYD has sought to person control implicit ample parts of its proviso chain, from manufacturing its ain cars to processing its ain batteries.
"We person a batch of beardown ... adjacent deeper exertion in-house, truthful we ever person backup," Li said.
Nvidia, whose chips underpin overmuch of the world's artificial quality development, has been caught successful the crossfire amid U.S.-China tensions. The company's H20 AI spot — designed specifically to comply with U.S. export restrictions to China — was archetypal banned, past permitted to beryllium sold successful China this twelvemonth aft a revenue-share woody betwixt Washington and Nvidia.
Now, China has reportedly been discouraging section tech firms from buying Nvidia's AI chips.
Nvidia designs an wholly antithetic acceptable of semiconductors for cars, however.
One of Nvidia's systems, Nvidia Drive AGX Orin, is designed to alteration cars to transportation retired immoderate driving tasks autonomously. BYD is simply a lawsuit of this product.
There is nary denotation truthful acold that the Chinese authorities is looking to prohibition this Nvidia system.
Li said BYD had not been told to halt utilizing immoderate Nvidia products, adding it was improbable that Beijing would prohibition the U.S. firm's car chips.
"I don't deliberation immoderate state volition bash that, due to the fact that this automatic volition termination Nvidia," Li said. "So Nvidia present is the highest marketplace worth company, truthful if they suffer the large marketplace from China ... cipher wants to spot this."
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