NVIDIA Wants Tegra Inside Cars, Foxconn Helps

Anyone thinking that NVIDIA was going to settle for dominance on the Android tablet would be wrong, as the company is setting up, or has already set up, an alliance for the spreading of Tegra in a certain other field.

Digitimes just made another on of its reports, one of those that may or may not be true.

Considering current events and the status of NVIDIA, though, there are high chances that the so-called rumor has more than a grain of truth in it.

What the report says is that NVIDIA intends to expand the reach of its Tegra mobile platform beyond the confines of the tablet and smartphone market.

Granted, even Tegra 3 hasn't actually scored many phone design wins, but that is besides the point.

The point here is that NVIDIA is putting its gloves and boots on for an incursion into the automobile space.

More precisely, it wants to develop Tegra-based products for car information and entertainment.

In technical terms, that means that the Santa Clara, California-based company is going to make automotive information and entertainment electronic modules.

Alas, NVIDIA is not actually known for its expertize in the field, so it sought help.

Foxconn has agreed to help set up a new Research and Development (R&D) Center in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA).

This is the fourth such facility that NVIDIA opens in Asia (the other three are in Shenzen, Shanghai, and Taipei).

Foxconn's factories in TEDA will see to the actual OEM production, leaving it to the new center to come up with the ideas.

Audi and Tesla Motors are said to have already agreed to adopt Tegra-based automotive modules.

Now all that remains is to see if the Kal-El, and its successors (or siblings, in case NVIDIA just decides to come up with a brand new platform) perform well.