Swedish car manufacturer Volvo Cars has announced a new deal to expand its partnership with Nvidia Corp. to improve artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. The new Volvo EX90 EV will be the first vehicle to incorporate Nvidia’s new software architecture.
New Platform for Volvo EX90
EX90 will come equipped with a hardware platform based on Nvidia’s DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) for centralized computing. This system possesses improved computing capacity to perform over 250 trillion operations per second (TOPS).
Plans for DRIVE Thor Platform
According to Volvo’s future roadmap, the company intends to adopt Nvidia’s next-generation DRIVE Thor platform in the latter half of this decade. Nvidia has declared that DRIVE Thor will be four times faster than DRIVE Orin at up to 1 TOPS, enabling better autonomous driving capabilities and safety features. This system will also feature Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU architecture, expected to further enhance performance. According to Jim Rowan, CEO of Volvo Cars, DRIVE Thor will help create more scalable software within the company while also enhancing safety, customer experience, and cost reduction.
Volvo Adjusts Financial Targets
Volvo is not limited to vehicle hardware as it looks to advance autonomous driving. The company plans to employ Nvidia DGX systems in AI model training, primarily through its software segment, Zenseact. Nvidia DGX is known to be the latest in AI technology, and its integration into Volvo’s operations is a move to increase the computing power needed to enhance the future of autonomous driving. Volvo and Nvidia have been working together since 2019 when both companies signed a deal to create AI for self-driving trucks. Besides technological improvements, Volvo has had to revise its financial strategies due to market environmental changes. The company has cut its operating profit margin goal to 7-8% from above 8%. Volvo has also changed its revenue forecast, dropping the previous target of reaching 550-600 billion Swedish crowns (approximately $53.5 billion-58.4 billion). However, Volvo expects the premium car segment to grow, attributing this to challenges in international trade and tariffs. This is the second time within a year that Volvo has revised its financial targets. In January, the company revised its earlier target of selling 1.2 million cars annually and an EBIT margin of 8-10% by the mid-decade.
The partnership between Volvo Cars and Nvidia continues, covering areas such as improving artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. The new software and hardware platform promises enhanced performance and safety of vehicles. Meanwhile, Volvo is adapting its financial strategies to meet market realities.
Comments