Volvo announces it will use Nvidia platform to develop self-driving cars

Volvo Group held its annual capital markets community meeting at its headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, announcing that it will use NVIDIA's DRIVE end-to-end autonomous driving platform to train, test and introduce autonomous driving artificial intelligence vehicles, targeting industries such as public transportation, freight, waste and recycling, construction, mining, and forestry.

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said on the stage that cross-industry collaboration is a new kind of leadership, and he viewed the collaboration with Volvo as the largest and most comprehensive milestone in the truck industry. Through the collaboration, for the first time, it is possible to imagine applying AI to automated transportation that was not possible in the past.

The two parties will jointly establish engineering teams in Gothenburg and Silicon Valley to develop in-vehicle artificial intelligence computing capabilities using the DRIVE AGX Pegasus  platform, as well as the full DRIVE AV software stack to develop 360-degree sensor processing, perception, map localization and path planning functions. In addition, these systems will be tested and verified using NVIDIA's DRIVE hardware-in-the-loop simulation platform.

Nvidia cited data showing that the global package delivery volume currently exceeds 35 million per day, with an annual growth rate of 28%. KPMG Consulting pointed out that by 2040, the distance of online shopping delivery services will increase by another 78 billion miles per year.

Self-driving trucks are just the right time to meet this need. McKinsey experts said that self-driving trucks can run 24 hours a day, shorten delivery time and improve efficiency, which can reduce the annual logistics costs in the United States by 45%, to $85 billion to $125 billion.

Nvidia said that Volvo is the world's second largest truck manufacturer. If autonomous driving vehicle technology is used in trucks all over the world, it will produce great benefits, from public transportation, freight, forestry, to construction and other industries. It can extend the vehicle's driving time and driving distance, and work efficiency will be further improved.