Volvo Cars and NVIDIA Deepen Ties

Volvo Cars has entered into a partnership with NVIDIA, which is a leading firm dealing with artificial intelligence (AI) computing. The two companies will collaborate on the development of a highly advanced, AI-capable core computer for the next generation of Volvo cars.

This core computer will use NVIDIA’s DRIVE AGX Xavier technology and Volvo will work on the development of an advanced computing platform for its new cars on the forthcoming Scalable Product Architecture 2 (SPA 2) vehicle platform. It is expected that the first car with the new core computer will be produced in the early years of the next decade.

The agreement been the two companies will further reinforce the existing partnership between Volvo Cars and NVIDIA. In 2017, the two companies had started working together on the development of advanced systems and software for autonomous vehicles.

The new computing platform will leverage NVIDIA’s latest work related to AI and its expertise in computers. This will help Volvo Cars to make significant advances in the implementation of advanced driver support systems, energy management technology and in-car personalization options.

The core computer will also help Volvo significantly with the development of safe autonomous cars as it would help add advanced 360-degree perception capabilities and a driver monitoring system.

Commenting on the development, Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars said that the successful launch of autonomous drive will call for an enormous amount of computing power and constant innovations in the field of artificial intelligence. He said that the company’s agreement with NVIDIA will definitely help Volvo to safely launch fully autonomous Volvo cars.

“As a world-leader in safety technology and innovation, Volvo understands there is a direct connection between safety, comfort, and the computing capability inside the vehicle,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

The SPA 2 vehicle architecture which is slated to be used soon is the next generation of Volvo Cars’ award-winning SPA modular vehicle architecture, which was used for all new 90 Series and 60 Series cars which were launched in recent years. These models played a key role in helping Volvo to stage an operational and financial turnaround in the period from 2010.

SPA 2 will offer all the current advantages of the modular SPA architecture and also incorporate next generation technologies in areas like electrification, connectivity and autonomous drive. The powerful core computer plays a key role in this process and will serve as an easier route for regular over-the-air software updates.