Volvo Cars is beginning the rollout of its new fully electric EX90 from its manufacturing facility in Charleston, South Carolina, to dealerships across the United States.
The Volvo EX90 is designed to offer customers ongoing benefits from future enhancements, advanced safety features, and capabilities. It is built on the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC), which can perform over 250 trillion operations per second (TOPS).
Powered by NVIDIA DriveOS, this system provides high-performance processing within a compact form factor no larger than a postage stamp. This computing architecture manages all vehicular functions, from enabling safety and driving assistance features to supporting the evolution of autonomous driving technologies, all while ensuring an outstanding user experience.
The cutting-edge SUV functions as a smart mobile device on wheels and is outfitted with Volvo’s most advanced sensor suite yet, which includes radar, lidar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and more. NVIDIA DRIVE Orin allows for real-time, redundant processing of 360-degree surround-sensor data, reinforcing Volvo Cars’ strong commitment to safety.
DRIVE Thor to Power Future Volvo Vehicles
By the end of this decade, Volvo Cars plans to adopt NVIDIA DRIVE Thor, which boasts an impressive 1,000 TOPS—quadrupling the processing power found in a single DRIVE Orin SoC while improving energy efficiency by seven times.
The next-generation DRIVE Thor processor for autonomous vehicles utilizes the innovative NVIDIA Blackwell GPU architecture, unlocking a wide array of new capabilities both inside and outside the vehicle. This state-of-the-art platform will enable the implementation of safe advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and self-driving functions, heralding a new era of in-vehicle experiences powered by generative AI.
Discussing the move to NVIDIA’s advanced processor, Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan emphasized, “By incorporating NVIDIA DRIVE Thor into our future models, we can scale our in-house software across our product range more efficiently, enhance vehicle safety, provide exceptional customer experiences, and improve our profit margins.”
Zenseact’s Strategic Investment in NVIDIA Technology
Volvo Cars, along with its software subsidiary Zenseact, is also investing in NVIDIA DGX systems for training AI models in the cloud. This initiative aims to equip future fleets with the most advanced AI-powered safety technologies.
Effectively managing the substantial data required for safely training next-generation AI-enabled vehicles necessitates the power and infrastructure typical of data centers.
NVIDIA DGX systems deliver the essential computational performance needed to efficiently train AI models at an unprecedented scale. Transportation companies employ these systems to accelerate the development of autonomous technologies in a cost-effective, enterprise-ready, and easily deployable manner.
The AI training hub created by Volvo Cars and Zenseact in the Nordics will utilize these systems to enhance various aspects of ADAS and autonomous driving software development. One significant advantage is the streamlining of the data annotation process, which traditionally involves a labor-intensive task of identifying and labeling objects for proper classification and recognition.
The cluster of DGX systems will also facilitate the processing of the necessary data for safety validation, enhancing performance while potentially reducing time to market by half.
“The NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputer will greatly enhance our AI training capabilities, establishing this in-house training center as one of the largest in the Nordics,” stated Anders Bell, chief engineering and technology officer at Volvo Cars. “By utilizing NVIDIA technology and developing this data center, we are enabling quick access to high-performing AI, ultimately making our products safer and better.”
With NVIDIA technology acting as the AI brain both inside the vehicle and in the cloud, Volvo Cars and Zenseact aim to deliver safe vehicles that offer drivers peace of mind, no matter where the journey takes them.
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