USA – In March, two autonomous vehicle firms – Plus of Santa Clara, California and Torc Robotics Inc of Blacksburg, Virginia – announced separate partnerships with chip designer Nvidia Corporation to integrate Nvidia products in their self-driving trucks.

Plus, which is working with Traton, Iveco, and Hyundai to develop autonomous trucks, will use a foundation model that has been trained on vast datasets by Nvidia. A so-called “world foundation model”, ‘Nvidia Cosmos’ will be used to virtually train the Plus ‘SuperDrive’ technology in readiness for commercial launch in 2027.

Daimler Truck North America subsidiary Torc has negotiated a separate agreement with Nvidia and Flex Ltd, a Singapore-domiciled electronics manufacturer with operations in Austin, Texas. Flex will supply its ‘Jupiter’ compute platform with system-on-chip software/hardware designed by Nvidia. The ‘Drive’ series of chips from Nvidia are already employed by Plus. Torc, which is also aiming for a 2027 launch, stated that the Flex-Nvidia solution adheres to its “stringent size, performance, cost, and reliability requirements”.