Cruise Builds Custom Silicon and Sensors to Slash Robotaxi Costs
Cruise pivots to in-house hardware development to overcome supplier limitations, creating custom chips and sensors that drastically reduce costs and power consumption.
Cruise embraces in-house hardware development to overcome the high costs, large sizes, and low reliability of third-party supplier parts. The company originally plans to rely on traditional automaker suppliers but realizes that commercializing robotaxis requires a different approach. This shift leads to the creation of custom compute boards and a dedicated silicon chip called Dune to handle sensor processing.
The company rolls out its C5 board in current autonomous Chevy Bolts and prepares the C6 board for the purpose-built Origin vehicle. These custom solutions deliver massive improvements over supplier alternatives, with the upcoming C7 board boasting a 90% cost reduction, a 70% decrease in mass, and a 60% drop in power usage. Cruise's own Dune chip processes all sensor data to power these efficiency gains.
Beyond silicon, Cruise designs most of its own sensors, including cameras, short-range lidar, and radar, because off-the-shelf radar lacks the required resolution. After top Tier 1 suppliers admit they lack the technology and need seven years to develop it, Cruise expands its hardware team from 20 to 550 people to build the components itself. This aggressive vertical integration remains essential for the company to hit its aggressive 2025 price targets.