TOPS Will Replace Horsepower In Future Electric Cars

TOPS stands for Trillions of Operations Per Second, and it is how we measure processing performance in computers. Cars are becoming increasingly computerized, with companies like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm pushing into automobiles. I’m already seeing internal charts that talk about Toyota and Ford having cars with 40 TOPS: Li Auto, XPENG, Tesla with 240 TOPS, Mercedes with 500 TOPS, and NIO with a whopping 1,000 TOPS.

This processing power is particularly important for electric cars because, unlike gas cars which can only adjust power a couple of times a second, electric cars are capable of adjusting power 1,000 times a second and you generally can see this play out when a Tesla drag races a more powerful gas car without struggling for traction (it also doesn’t hurt that electrics typically have all-wheel drive). 

Let's discuss why TOPS may be more important than Horsepower in future electric cars.

Why TOPS Beat HP In Electric Cars

There are a few guys with Teslas who love to go to drag races and spank dragsters. The top-of-the-line Model S Plaid isn’t even allowed to run on some drag strips because the performance they put out typically requires a full roll cage (which, by the way, implies they are unsafe at this level of performance. These aren’t specially equipped drag racers, but cars people bought out of the dealer that drivers typically use a daily driver.

I’ve owned and driven powerful gas cars, and they are a pain to drive as transportation; I had one Jaguar that was built by a doctor and turned into a track car that I thought I could use as a daily driver, and it was a total pain in the butt to drive around town. The clutch was really hard to slop, it had an uneven idle, and it tended to overheat in traffic on hot days. But man, at 160+, it was excellent, and given I didn’t track it, I’m lucky I didn’t end up dead or in jail. It was also a bit loud and costly to maintain.

But electric cars can provide that breadth of performance, from being a daily driver to a full-on dragster. Other than going through tires quickly (much of that is due to weight and aggressive camber), they do it very well. While a lot of that is due to the powertrain, a great deal is also due to the car’s processing power.

And remember an advantage in traction, which is what this processing power provided equates to the ability to drive in snow, rain, ice, and other conditions where traction is uncertain more safely. The motors can adjust for the loss of traction more quickly between tires. But this also makes the anti-lock brake system work better (though the extra weight of the car overcomes this somewhat because the Tesla S Plaid’s brakes are not up to the power that the car has), accident avoidance systems can act more quickly, and even diagnostics on the car can not only be more accurate but can come with detailed information on the problem including how to correct it, and increasingly the cars will use this processing performance to fix their problems over time.

Not Just Performance

But it isn’t just performance but entertainment and in-car safety. Systems that provide entertainment can use this to allow gaming by the passengers, enhance movies and music, and have the potential to entertain small children better, reducing the times when the kids get bored and act out. In addition, we have the coming AI features of “Guardian Angel,” where the car aggressively protects against accidents and phased self-driving, which is expected to reach Level 5 sometime around 2030-2035.

So, this will enhance safety, entertainment, and increasingly enhanced ADAS (Automated Driver Assistance) on top of better performance. The more TOPS, the more capable all of these systems will become.

Wrapping Up: Fully Autonomous Cars

Of course, the eventual endgame is fully autonomous cars, which I think will become similar to horizontal self-guided elevators over time. And much like most of us don’t own elevators today, I expect most won’t own cars then. Kids increasingly don’t even want to drive, suggesting that the next wave of adults may be OK with not owning a car. The rest of us are unlikely to go so easily into the non-automotive night (I know I’m not).

It'll be a very different world. Just as the end of the last century was massively different than the beginning, I expect the end of this one will be even more massively different. I doubt I’ll be around then, but here I hope you will be.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst covering automotive technology and battery developments at Torque News. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia, and follow his articles on Forbes, on X, and LinkedIn.