Bosch, the world’s largest supplier of automotive parts, has announced plans to build a €1 billion ($1.1 billion) semiconductor plant, focused on self-driving cars, smart homes, and smart city infrastructure.
The factory will be located in Dresden, Germany and should be ready by 2021, according to Bloomberg.
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Bosch already supplies automakers with chips and software for cars, this factory will vastly expand the company’s output and allow it to develop unique chips specifically for autonomous systems, like self-driving and smart home technologies.
“Semiconductors are the core components of all electronic systems. With connectivity and automation growing, they are being used in more and more areas of application. By extending our semiconductor manufacturing capacity, we are giving ourselves a sound basis for the future and strengthening our competitiveness,” said Bosch CEO, Dr. Volkmar Denner.
Bosch is not the first to show interest in building chips specifically for self-driving, Intel and Nvidia are already supplying super-fast processors to automakers. The company seems to want to supply all sorts of chips to automakers however, which will most likely include parts that other suppliers are not interested in developing.
With self-driving cars still a decade from mass production, it gives Bosch a good few years to get up and running. The two other uses, for smart home and city infrastructure, are also new markets that will take a few years before they’re ubiquitous.
