DETROIT (Reuters) – Volvo Cars said on Monday that they will use a new generation of power-driven chips from Nvidia Corp to enable more autonomous driving functions in future vehicles from next year.
Volvo is among the crowd of new and established automakers that are putting digital processing above horsepower while trying to outperform Tesla Inc. to catch up.
Tesla, the world’s most valuable carmaker, has partly taken the lead in software-driven functions and functional capabilities by partly equipping its cars and sports utility vehicles with powerful, and expensive, on-board computers that can handle complex tasks such as automatic driving, and upgraded over the air.
For Nvidia, the Volvo agreement, a similar agreement with the start-up of electric vehicles Faraday Future, and other agreements expected in the coming weeks, means a reload of growth for the automotive business for the game and data center processor.
“Nvidia’s car ordering pipeline has grown to the billions of dollars,” Danny Shapiro, Nvidia’s senior director of motor vehicles, told reporters ahead of the company’s GTC21 conference on Monday. Revenue for the company’s automotive business fell by 23% in 2020.
Volvo Cars, owned by Chinese Geely Holding, will use Nvidia’s new Drive Orin system, with far more processing power than the current Nvidia chips used in Volvo vehicles, and launch a new generation of XC90 sports utility vehicles , which will be launched next year.
In a nod to Tesla, Volvo said vehicles equipped with the new Nvidia Orin systems would be “hardware ready” for autonomous driving functions, such as a “Highway Pilot” function that will be activated via software download “when confirmed secure for individual geographic locations and conditions.”
Faraday Future said it would offer autonomous driving, parking and a “call” feature in its FF 91 model in 2022. Tesla already offers a “call” system that allows a car in a remote parking lot of the owner can navigate.
Competitive car manufacturers, including Daimler AG and several Chinese start-ups for electric vehicles, follow suit.
Nvidia also said Monday it is developing a new on-board computer system on a chip called Atlan that gives a car the computing power currently found in a data center. This chip should be ready for 2025 models, Nvidia said.
Reporting by Joe White; Edited by Nick Zieminski