Mercedes-Benz said on 16 October that it is extending its partnership with Nvidia to build the next generation of its driver assistance and automated driving systems. Volvo Cars said much the same thing the day before. Both are taking the same three Nvidia components: the Hyperion compute and sensor architecture, the Alpamayo driving software stack and the Halos safety layer, which sits alongside each carmaker’s own safety systems.
The consolidation is the story. Two of Europe’s best known carmakers have put one supplier’s stack at the centre of their driving systems within a day of each other, and days before Nvidia’s GTC Berlin conference. Mercedes went furthest in its wording, calling Nvidia its “most important strategic partner in automated driving”.
Neither release commits to much that can be checked. Mercedes describes urban point-to-point assistance, active safety and automated parking, and says the work supports future SAE Level 4 applications including robolimousines, but gives no timeline. Volvo plans a gradual introduction of what it calls eyes-off and mind-off driving, debuting in a next-generation car, with no model name and no date. Neither discloses financial terms, and neither names a production vehicle.
The Mercedes release and the Volvo release are both on Nvidia’s newsroom.