At CES 2024, Nvidia announced several Chinese smart EV (electric vehicle) makers as some of its latest customers. Li Auto has selected the Nvidia Drive Thor centralized car computer to power its next-generation vehicles, and EV makers GWM (Great Wall Motor) and Xiaomi have adopted the Nvidia Drive Orin platform to power their automated driving systems.

“The transportation industry is embracing centralized compute for highly automated and autonomous driving,” said Xinzhou Wu, Vice President of Automotive at Nvidia. “The AI car computer of choice for today’s intelligent fleets is Nvidia Drive Orin, with automakers increasingly looking to the advanced capabilities and AI performance of its successor, Nvidia Drive Thor, for their future vehicle roadmaps.”

Drive Thor is the company’s next-generation centralized car computer that integrates a range of intelligent functions into a single AI (artificial intelligence) compute platform, delivering autonomous driving and parking capabilities, driver and passenger monitoring, and AI cockpit functionality.

Li Auto currently uses two Drive Orin processors to power its AD Max assisted-driving system for its L Series models. Bolstered by the strong sales growth of the three L Series models, the L9, L8, and L7, Xiang Li, Chairman and CEO of Li Auto, said in December that the company’s monthly deliveries have exceeded 40,000 vehicles for two consecutive months, the highest among Chinese emerging new energy automakers and premium brands in China, making it the best-selling brand among SUVs priced above RMB300,000 in China.

On The L-Series, the Nvidia processors feature a combined 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to enable real-time fusing and processing of sensor information. They power full-scenario autonomous driving for navigation on advanced driver assistance systems, full-scenario assisted driving for lane change control, automated parking, and automatic emergency braking.

The new AD Max 3.0 upgrade transitions the system to an end-to-end algorithmic architecture dominated by large AI models. It delivers a safer, more comfortable intelligent driving experience using an occupancy network and spatio-temporal trajectory planning and model-predictive control algorithms.

“Li Auto has made significant progress in the research and development of autonomous driving and plans to accelerate the rollout of AD Max 3.0 through the upgrade of OTA version 5.0,” said Xiang Li, last month. “With this upgrade, our AD Max 3.0 will provide full scenario autonomous driving (Navigation on ADAS) and assisted driving (lane change control) functions, as well as the industry’s leading AEB active safety system and automated parking system.”

GWM has announced its upcoming EVs will integrate Drive Orin centralized computing for its intelligent assisted-driving system composed of the Coffee OS 2.0 electrical/electronic architecture and intelligent chassis. The system, developed in collaboration with Nvidia, will debut in the first model in the first half of 2024. It will enable advanced intelligent driving features such as Urban Navigate on Autopilot and cross-floor Memory Parking to be rolled out on various models from GWM’s Ora, Wey, and Haval brands.

The electric vehicle arm of Xiaomi has announced its first car, the SU7 sedan, which is built on a dual Drive Orin configuration for highway driving functions. Late last month, the company “pre-launched” the vehicle positioned as a “full-size high-performance eco-technology sedan.” The car will be officially launched in the first half of 2024.

In announcing the technology giant’s entry into the automotive industry, Lei Jun, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Xiaomi Group, said it marked a significant leap from the smartphone industry and a crucial step toward closing the loop of the “Human x Car x Home” smart ecosystem.

“Xiaomi has decided to invest tenfold, starting from the development of fundamental core technologies, committing to constructing an outstanding vehicle,” said Lei Jun. “Through 15 to 20 years of effort, Xiaomi aims to become one of the top five global automakers.”

Based on Xiaomi’s leading large language model for perception and decision-making, the sedan can navigate through Chinese cities regardless of local and administrative divisions within the country or type of roadway. The Xiaomi Pilot autonomous driving system is equipped with two Nvidia Orin high-performance chips with a combined computing power of 508 TOPS. Perception hardware includes one lidar, eleven high-definition cameras, three millimeter-wave radars, and twelve ultrasonic radars on the Max model.

With top-tier configurations and full-stack in-house research, Xiaomi says its intelligent autonomous driving system is set to join the industry’s top echelon by 2024.

Amid explosive interest in generative AI, the auto industry is racing to embrace the power of AI across a range of critical activities, from vehicle design, engineering, and manufacturing, to marketing and sales, according to a blog post by Calisa Cole, who is responsible for AV Policy and Public Affairs for the Automotive Team at Nvidia.

“The generative AI trend—along with the growing importance of software-defined computing—will continue to accelerate in the automotive market in 2024,” said Cole. “For evidence, look at the exciting lineup of technology on display from Nvidia’s automotive partners at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.”

Mercedes-Benz will kick off CES with a press conference to announce a range of exciting, software-driven features and the latest developments in the MB.OS story, each one showcased in a range of cars including the Concept CLA Class, which is using Nvidia Drive Orin for the automated driving domain. The German OEM is also using digital twins for production with help from Nvidia Omniverse, a platform for developing applications to design, collaborate, plan, and operate manufacturing and assembly facilities.

Other OEMs at CES using Nvidia solutions exhibiting with lidar innovator Luminar. Polestar is showcasing its Polestar 3 powered by the Nvidia Drive Orin central core computer, and autonomous truck technology developer Kodiak Robotics relies on Nvidia GPUs for high-performance compute to process the enormous quantities of data it collects from its cameras, radar, and lidar sensors.

On the RV (recreational vehicle) front, startup Pebble is showcasing its flagship Flow electric semi-autonomous travel trailer powered by Nvidia Drive Orin, with production starting before the end of 2024.

On the supplier side, Lenovo is displaying its vehicle computing roadmap, featuring new products based on Nvidia Drive Thor. They include XH1, a central compute unit for advanced driver-assistance systems and smart cockpit; AH1, a level 2++ ADAS domain controller unit; and AD1, a level 4 autonomous driving domain controller unit.

Cipia is showcasing a production-ready version of Cabin Sense, which includes both driver and occupancy monitoring and is expected to go into serial production this year. Cerence is introducing CaLLM, an automotive-specific large language model that serves as the foundation for the company’s next-gen in-car computing platform running on Nvidia Drive.

For simulation, Ansys is demonstrating how it leverages Nvidia Omniverse to accelerate autonomous vehicle development. Ansys AVxcelerate sensors will be accessible within Nvidia Drive Sim.