Jaguar Land Rover forges a partnership with Nvidia for its vehicles to have advanced autonomous driving functionality and heightened connectivity.
(Photo : BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)
British automaker Jaguar Land Rover has forged a partnership with American software giant Nvidia to introduce advanced autonomous driving functionality and heightened connectivity to all the vehicles it will launch starting in 2025.
The new "multi-year" team-up between the two companies means that they will collaborate on the development of the software, rather than Nvidia solely supplying its technology to Jaguar Land Rover off the shelf.
The software that we are talking about is Nvidia's Drive platform. Nvidia will install high-powered computers into all new Jaguar and Land Rover cars, supplying these vehicles with next-generation automated driving systems and AI-enabled services and experiences for the carmaker's customers.
Drive Hyperion platform to power Jaguar Land Rover cars
The latest iteration of Nvidia's Drive platform called Hyperion will be integrated into the vehicles of Jaguar and Land Rover. Hyperion allows carmakers to customize their driving features, an innovation that caught the fancy of Jaguar Land Rover.
Powering Nvidia's Drive Hyperion platform is the Orin. It is the chipmaker's system-on-a-chip, similar to Intel's Mobileye EyeQ or Tesla's Full Self-Driving chip. The companies said that Nvidia's new hardware would form the basis for a new set of driving features, including autonomous driving, advanced driver assistance systems, and automated parking.
Nvidia's vice president for automotive Danny Shapiro is proud of his company's newest driving platform, saying, "Orin is the AI brain of the car, and Drive Hyperion is the central nervous system." He described the capabilities enabled by the Drive Hyperion platform as "highly automated and full self-driving."
According to Shapiro, highly automated, in many cases, would mean that a driver could get onto a freeway and a vehicle will drive itself. He added that the car would maintain a safe distance and stay in the lanes, potentially changing lanes automatically upon request. Shapiro explains that full self-driving is when a driver gets in the vehicle, and the car will take that person from point A to point B without the need to touch anything.
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Jaguar Land Rover and Nvidia aims for Level 3 autonomous driving
As Shapiro mentioned in his latter point, the ultimate goal for Jaguar Land Rover and Nvidia is to equip their vehicles with a platform capable of level three autonomous driving, as per Reuters. That means cars will have environmental detection capabilities that will enable them to make decisions without the input of humans. Human drivers must not rely on them totally, however, as they need to be alert at all times and be able to take control of the vehicle if something goes awry.
Jaguar Land Rover strategy director François Dossa is excited about his company's new agreement with Nvidia, saying, "Co-development is so very important, and so key, in this partnership. Together with Nvidia, we can now accelerate our in-vehicle software, uniquely delivering modern luxury experiences."
It is important to mention that Jaguar Land Rover's cars will still use its own operating system Pivi Pro, which is likely to be upgraded before 2025, with Nvidia's Drive Hyperion platform the one driving it.
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