Volvo Makes a Bigger Bet on Nvidia

Volvo is upgrading its autonomous driving system through a close partnership with Nvidia spanning nearly a decade, extending beyond its battery-electric vehicles.

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Volvo is advancing its self-driving system by expanding its nearly decade-long partnership with Nvidia. Volvo will use three pieces of Nvidia hardware and software in its future cars to deliver an autonomous driving system that can navigate city streets and highways, the companies announced Thursday.

Under this extensive collaboration, Volvo will combine its automotive safety engineering and systems with Nvidia's Hyperion sensor and computing architecture, Alpamayo's driving software stack, and Halos' safety assessment layer.

According to Ali Kani, head of Nvidia's automotive division, the Alpamayo stack is redundant and versatile. Alpamayo, he said, combines a family of artificial intelligence models, datasets, and simulation and development tools used to build self-driving software with classic software that uses machine learning and camera and radar understanding.

"The thing is, we're running these two stacks at the same time, and we have multimodal sensors in our philosophy because that way the product is safer," Kani said. Alpamayo's open source software has now been downloaded by more than 650,000 developers, he added.

Volvo did not disclose the value of the partnership or which car models will be the first to use this new suite of Nvidia technology. But Alvin Bakkens, Volvo's head of software development, hinted at the scale of the deal and how it represents the automaker's evolution toward developing a full technology stack designed for electric vehicles as well as its plug-in hybrids and gas-powered vehicles.

"Automakers used to be a lot like developing car lines and working with different suppliers and so on, and we've completely changed and become a full technology company," Bakkens said.

He said the first vehicle with this new Nvidia technology stack will come within a decade, and "of course the technology could go beyond that."

While Volvo's relationship with Nvidia isn't new, the expanded partnership reflects the automaker's efforts to bring the latest self-driving software to all of its vehicles — not just its electric vehicles.

All of Volvo's electric cars use Nvidia's Orin computer chip, which processes data from cameras, radar and other sensors to help the vehicle understand its surroundings and make driving decisions.

"What we want to do going forward is to further standardize Hyperion — also from a sensor suite perspective — to really open up the stack for a broader partnership with Nvidia," Bakkens said.

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