GM's Cruise is making its own chips for self-driving vehicles to save on costs

GM's Cruise division doesn't want to rely on third-party manufacturers for the chips powering its autonomous vehicles -- so, it's making its own. Based on what Carl Jenkins, the company's VP for Hardware Engineering, told Reuters, the main motivator for the switch is the lofty costs associated with paying for other companies' chips. "Two years ago, we were paying a lot of money for a GPU from a famous vendor," Jenkins told the news organization, referring to NVIDIA. He explained that Cruise couldn't negotiate because it wasn't mass manufacturing autonomous vehicles just yet. Its technology is still in its experimental stages, and while it recently became the first company to secure permission to charge for driverless rides, its operations remain limited.