but what’s less noticed is that Tesla is also a leading chip designer. The company hired star semiconductor designers like Jim Keller to build a chip specialized for its automated driving needs, which is fabricated using leading-edge technology. As early as 2014, some analysts were noting that Tesla cars “resemble a smartphone.” The company has been often compared to Apple, which also designs its own semiconductors. Like Apple’s products, Tesla’s finely tuned user experience and its seemingly effortless integration of advanced computing into a twentieth-century product—a car—are only possible
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