Nvidia Sees Autonomous Cars as $60 Billion, ‘Fairly Well-Modeled’ Opportunity

Nvidia sees autonomous driving as a $60 billion “addressable market opportunity” by 2035, said Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress on a Thursday earnings call. “We believe that every vehicle will be autonomous one day. By 2035, this will encompass 100 million autonomous passenger vehicles and 10 million robo taxis.” Nvidia’s Drive Constellation virtual reality platform will help autonomous-driving developers “test and validate their systems in a virtual world across a wide range of scenarios before deploying on the road,” she said. “Each year, 10 trillion miles are driven around the world. Even if test cars can eventually cover millions of miles, that's an insignificant fraction of all the scenarios that require testing to create a safe and reliable autonomous vehicle.” More than 370 companies and research institutions are using the platform, she said. CEO Jensen Huang sees driver-less taxis going to market starting next year and self-driving cars “probably somewhere between 2020 and 2021,” he said in Q&A. The size of the market opportunity “is fairly well-modeled,” he said. “I believe that every single everything that moves someday will be autonomous or have autonomous capabilities.” The estimate of 100 million autonomous vehicles on the road by 2035 includes passenger cars and “the countless taxis, all the trucks, all the agriculture equipment, all the pizza delivery vehicles, you name it,” he said. ”Everything is going to be autonomous, and the market opportunity is going to be quite large, and that's the reason why we're so determined to go create that market.”