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Li Auto , an galvanic fomite Creator adore by new Formosan families , is stepping up its endeavor to work up in - house automotive chips and has gone overseas to seek talent for the course .

The eight - class - old company is presently hiring five lieu in Singapore to develop Si carbide ( SiC ) great power module , an electrical component that expend SiC semiconductor unit in switching , fit in to the firm ’s LinkedInrecruitment noticeswhich were posted yesterday .

The head count includes the hire of a oecumenical manager , who will be responsible for establishing Li Auto ’s R&D center in the city - DoS and formulating the tech and Cartesian product roadmaps of power semiconductors for the house .

The recruitment in Singapore is only a small fraction of the report squad of around 160 that Li Auto has assembled to work on self-propelled chips , consort to Formosan tech intelligence blogLatePost . The head of the house ’s semiconductor endeavour is reportedly its chief technology officerYan Xie , whose background is principally in computer software engineering at Chinese giants like Huawei and Alibaba .

TechCrunch has reached out to Li Auto for gossip on the story .

Led by internet entrepreneur , Li Auto , Nio and Xpeng shape a triumvirate of untried EV upstart in China that have resist arithmetic mean that their limited manufacturing experience would forestall them from gaining meaningful land in the competitive , deeply entrenched auto market place .

Among them , Li Auto has stand out with its sale figures . In the third quarter , the Beijing - based carmaker shippedover 100,000 vehicles , more than doubleXpeng ’s record of 40,000 in the same period . ( Nio has n’t announced its Q3 results , butin Q2 , it delivered around 23,500 vehicles . )

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Manufacturing hoo-ha during COVID-19 have foreground the grandness of supply chain stableness to carmakers around the world , and this apply honest for Chinese EV firms that swear on both power semiconductors for motor control and illation cow dung for advanced assisted driving , which has become a major marketing point to domestic consumers .

These fellowship are also increasingly wary of possible chip endorsement as kinship between China and the U.S. continue to exacerbate . The large linguistic communication good example blank has already taken a adult hit after the Biden administrationrestricted Nvidia ’s mellow - end AI chips to China .

While China has its own homegrown reply to Nvidia ’s auto - grade chips , such asBlack SesameandHorizon Robotics , Li Auto , Xpeng and Nio have all committed investment funds to making their own chips , following in the footstepsof their American opposite number Tesla .

In September , for example , Nioreleasedits first proprietary organisation - on - a - chip ( SoC ) for lidar . Back in 2021 , Xpeng ’s then head of autonomous vehicle Xinzhou Wuhintedthat the company might consider working on AV chips . Wu , a Qualcomm veteran , recently left Xpengfor a senior spot at Nvidia , a move that has been seen as the semiconductor unit giant ’s attempt to catch up in the machine cow chip have game .

Tesla rival XPeng ’s head of autonomous driving quits , rumor to join Nvidia