Jaguar Land Rover has partnered with American software giant Nvidia to introduce heightened connectivity and advanced autonomous driving functionality to all cars launched from 2025.
Forming an important part of JLR CEO Thierry Bolloré's bold Reimagine transformation strategy for the car maker, the new "multi-year" partnership means the two firms will collaborate on software development, rather than Nvidia supplying its technology off the shelf.
Nvidia's Drive software architecture will be integrated into all new Jaguar and Land Rover cars, supplying them with "next-generation automated driving systems, plus AI-enabled services and experiences for its customers".
Specific details of the system's functionality remain under wraps, but JLR suggested active safety, parking systems, occupant monitoring, advanced visualisation and uprated safety aids will be among the headline features. A crucial component for JLR's business model will be the opening up of new revenue streams courtesy of the heightened connectivity capacity of its cars.
JLR is ultimately aiming for Nvidia-equipped cars to be capable of level three autonomous driving, which means they will have environmental detection capabilities and all be able to make decisions without human input - but the human drivers must remain alert and able to take control.
Software engineers from each company have been working together "side by side" on the project for several months already. "Co-development is so very important, and so key, in this partnership," said JLR strategy director François Dossa.
"Collaborating and sharing knowledge with industry leaders in connected services, data and software development is a cornerstone of our Reimagine strategy," he told reporters. "Together with Nvidia, we can now accelerate our in-vehicle software, uniquely delivering modern luxury experiences."
The cars will still use JLR's own operating system – currently known as Pivi Pro but likely to be upgraded prior to 2025 – with Nvidia's Drive Hyperion computing and sensing stack integrated.
The software can be tailored from car to car across JLR's portfolio to suit their different positioning. Danny Shapiro, boss of Nvidia's automotive division, said unique characteristics for each vehicle could extend to "how the cars drive on the road, or maybe related to other things such as how they are parked or how you can access them".
He added: "This is part of the fun journey of creating new software for these cars. "If you think about it, when the iPhone came out, it had a bunch of apps, and it was great, but now you look at how many apps exist and it's crazy. We're going to see the same type of thing happen with cars, where the interaction with the vehicle, whether you're in it or not, will be really delightful."
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This accident mitigation thingy, bit hyper, no?, occasionally it flashes a red warning when there's plenty of room,and, I thought AI wasn't going to happen, I read that that Drones that are used by the Armed forces were going to be fully autonomous ,then they realised that taking the human out of the decision making was a bad idea, will this happen in Cars?
They will need special programming for Range Rovers, computer will have to charge up closing lanes and cut into the front of a queue with brute force, drive at 100mph flashing peasants out the way in the outside lane, park across at least 2 parking spaces....