Strong automotive theme for NVIDIA's CES announcements

NVIDIA has made a number of automotive-related announcements at CES. 

Compliance

The company's autonomous vehicle (AV) platform, NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Hyperion, has passed industry-safety assessments by TÜV SÜD and TÜV Rheinland — two of the industry’s foremost authorities for automotive-grade safety and cybersecurity. 

NVIDIA is the first platform company to receive a comprehensive set of third-party assessments for its automotive technologies — including the NVIDIA DRIVE end-to-end self-driving platform, spanning system-on a-chip (SoC), operating system (OS), sensor architecture and level 2+ application software — as well as independent accreditation as an AI systems safety and cybersecurity inspection lab for the automotive market.

DRIVE Hyperion is the industry’s first and only end-to-end autonomous driving platform. It includes the DRIVE AGX SoC and reference board design, the NVIDIA DriveOS automotive operating system, a sensor suite, and an active safety and level 2+ driving stack. Automotive safety pioneers such as Mercedes-Benz, JLR and Volvo Cars are adopting the modular, scalable platform, which is built to be compatible across future DRIVE SoC generations.

Available in 1H25, the latest iteration of DRIVE Hyperion — designed for both passenger and commercial vehicles — will feature the high-performance DRIVE AGX Thor SoC built on NVIDIA Blackwell architecture.

“A billion vehicles driving trillions of miles each year move the world. With autonomous vehicles — one of the largest robotics markets — now here, the NVIDIA Blackwell-powered platform will shift this revolution into high gear,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. 

“The next wave of autonomous machines will rely on physical AI world foundation models to understand and interact with the real world, and NVIDIA DRIVE is purpose-built for this new era, delivering unmatched functional safety and AI.”

According to NVIDIA, next-generation vehicles will be increasingly software-defined, capable of receiving new features and functionality over their lifetime. Tapping into NVIDIA’s 15,000 engineering years invested in vehicle safety, DRIVE Hyperion will help ensure advanced automotive systems with rich, AI-based functionalities are compliant with the automotive industry’s stringent functional safety and cybersecurity standards.  

TÜV SÜD granted the ISO 21434 Cybersecurity Process certification to NVIDIA for automotive SoC, platform and software engineering processes. Additionally, NVIDIA DriveOS 6.0 conforms to ISO 26262 Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) D standards, pending certification release. TÜV Rheinland performed an independent United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) safety assessment of NVIDIA DRIVE AV related to safety requirements for complex electronic systems.

In addition, NVIDIA is now accredited by the ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) to provide safety and cybersecurity inspections for NVIDIA DRIVE ecosystem partners. A new NVIDIA DRIVE AI Systems Inspection Lab will help the NVIDIA DRIVE automotive ecosystem build compliant autonomous driving software.

NVIDIA DRIVE Thor, the core computer for DRIVE Hyperion, is the successor to the production-proven NVIDIA DRIVE Orin. It paves the way for the next era of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology, known as AV 2.0, which involves delivering human-like autonomous driving capabilities for navigating the most complex roadway scenarios. 

DRIVE Thor is based on the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture and is optimised for the most demanding processing workloads, including those involving generative AI, vision language models and large language models. Its simplified architecture enhances generalisation, reduces latency and boosts safety by harnessing NVIDIA accelerated computing to run the end-to-end stack and a proven safety stack in parallel.

Customers

Source: NVIDIA. Aurora, Continental and Toyota are now making use of NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI.

 

Toyota, Aurora and Continental have joined the list of global mobility leaders developing and building their consumer and commercial vehicle fleets on NVIDIA accelerated computing and AI.

Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, will build its next-generation vehicles on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin, running the safety-certified NVIDIA DriveOS operating system. The vehicles will offer functionally safe, advanced driving assistance capabilities.

NVIDIA noted that the majority of today’s auto manufacturers, truckmakers, robotaxi, and autonomous delivery vehicle companies, tier-one suppliers and mobility startups are developing on NVIDIA DRIVE AGX platform and technologies. NVIDIA’s automotive vertical business is expected to grow to approximately US$5 B in FY26.

“The autonomous vehicle revolution has arrived, and automotive will be one of the largest AI and robotics industries,” said Huang.

“NVIDIA is bringing two decades of automotive computing, safety expertise and its CUDA AV platform to transform the multitrillion dollar auto industry.”

Aurora, Continental and NVIDIA also announced a long-term strategic partnership to deploy driverless trucks at scale, powered by NVIDIA DRIVE. NVIDIA’s accelerated compute running DriveOS will be integrated into Aurora Driver, an SAE level 4 autonomous-driving system that Continental plans to mass-manufacture in 2027.

Other mobility companies adopting NVIDIA DRIVE AGX for their next-generation advanced driver-assistance systems and autonomous vehicle roadmaps include BYD, JLR, Li Auto, Lucid, Mercedes-Benz, NIO, Nuro, Rivian, Volvo Cars, Waabi, Wayve, Xiaomi, ZEEKR, Zoox and many more.

In addition to the DRIVE AGX in-vehicle computer, two other NVIDIA computers serve as the foundation for automotive-grade AV development: NVIDIA DGX systems for training advanced AI models and building a robust AV software stack in the cloud, and the NVIDIA Omniverse platform running on NVIDIA OVX systems for simulation and validation. These three computers, now enhanced with the new NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation model platform, are set to accelerate end-to-end AV development and mass deployment. 

Partnerships

Hyundai Motor Group (the Group) signed a partnership agreement at CES with NVIDIA to develop the next generation of safe, secure mobility with AI and industrial digital twins. The development is expected to elevate Hyundai Motor Group’s smart mobility innovation with NVIDIA accelerated computing, generative AI, digital twins and physical AI technologies.

The Group is launching a broad range of AI initiatives into its key mobility products, including software-defined vehicles and robots, along with optimising its manufacturing lines.

“Hyundai Motor Group is exploring innovative approaches with AI technologies in various fields such as robotics, autonomous driving and smart factory,” said Heung-Soo Kim, Executive VP and head of the global strategy office at Hyundai Motor Group. 

“This partnership is set to accelerate our progress, positioning the Group as a frontrunner in driving AI-empowered mobility innovation.”

Hyundai Motor Group will tap into NVIDIA’s data-centre-level computing and infrastructure to efficiently manage the massive data volumes essential for training its advanced AI models and building a robust autonomous vehicle (AV) software stack.

With the NVIDIA Omniverse platform running on NVIDIA OVX systems, Hyundai Motor Group will connect its existing software tools to achieve highly accurate product design and prototyping in a digital twin environment. This will help boost engineering efficiencies, reduce costs and accelerate time to market, the two companies said. The group will also work with NVIDIA to create simulated environments for developing autonomous driving systems and validating self-driving applications.

Simulation is becoming increasingly critical in the safe deployment of AVs. It provides a safe way to test self-driving technology in any possible weather, traffic conditions or locations, as well as rare or dangerous scenarios.

Hyundai Motor Group will develop applications, like digital twins using Omniverse technologies, to optimise its existing and future manufacturing lines in simulation. These digital twins can improve production quality, streamline costs and enhance overall manufacturing efficiencies.

The company can also build and train industrial robots for safe deployment in its factories using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, a robotics simulation framework built on Omniverse.

NVIDIA is helping advance robotics intelligence with AI tools and libraries for automated manufacturing. As a result, Hyundai Motor Group can conduct industrial robot training in physically-accurate virtual environments. This can also help make interactions with these robots and their real-world surroundings more intuitive and effective while ensuring they can work safely alongside humans.

Explore

Watch Huang’s CES opening keynote.