Volvo and Nvidia have announced a wider partnership, building on a relationship that is nearly a decade old. The aim is an automated driving system that can handle highways and city streets alike. It will not stay in battery-electric cars, either: plug-in hybrids and gas models are included.
What goes into it
Volvo will pair its own safety engineering with three Nvidia pieces: Hyperion, the sensor and compute architecture; Alpamayo, the driving software; and Halos, a safety evaluation layer. Ali Kani, who runs Nvidia's automotive business, calls the Alpamayo setup redundant and diverse, since a family of AI models runs alongside classical software built on camera and radar perception. The open-source Alpamayo code has been downloaded by more than 650,000 developers.
Every Volvo EV today already uses Nvidia's Orin chip. Alwin Bakkenes, Volvo's head of software, says the company plans to standardize more on Hyperion, including its sensor set.
What is still missing
The first car on the new stack will arrive in "the not-too-near future," within the decade. The model, the deal's value and the level of autonomy have not been disclosed.