Toyota and Nvidia have agreed on a partnership for the control of autonomous vehicles at CES 2025. The world’s largest car manufacturer plans to use Nvidia’s chips and software in future generations of cars. Toyota will utilize Nvidia’s Drive AGX platform, featuring the Orin combo processor and DriveOS operating system. Additionally, the German automotive supplier Continental is deepening its collaboration with Nvidia in this field.
Nvidia introduced the next-gen Orin processor for autonomous vehicles with high computing power back in 2019. This combo processor, a System-on-Chip (SoC), is claimed by the manufacturer to be capable of supporting fully autonomous driving at level 5 when paired with GPUs. This includes Nvidia’s own operating system for autonomous vehicles, DriveOS, which is designed with a focus on safety.
Toyota already collaborates with Nvidia in cloud computing and plans to expand this in the future. According to Techcrunch, the research institute of the Japanese manufacturer has been using Nvidia’s cloud AI since 2019 to develop, train, and validate autonomous driving technologies. In the future, Nvidia’s technology will also be integrated into the vehicles themselves.
“Toyota is a great example of our cloud-to-car strategy,” said Ali Kani, Vice President of Automotive at Nvidia, during a press conference. “We have already worked with Toyota in the cloud and are now excited to expand this partnership to work with them in the car.”
Toyota is not the only manufacturer relying on Nvidia for autonomous driving. Nvidia also partners with Mercedes-Benz, Lucid, Rivian, and Volvo, as well as Chinese brands BYD, Nio, and Xiaomi for driver assistance systems and future self-driving vehicles.
At CES, Nvidia also announced a deepening of its collaboration with Continental. Since 2018, Continental and Nvidia have been working together on autonomous driving technology with artificial intelligence. Although a platform for highly automated driving was expected by 2021, it has not yet materialized. However, the two companies have now established a new multi-year strategic partnership.
Nvidia and Continental, along with the U.S. startup Aurora Innovation, which develops technologies for self-driving vehicles, plan to bring autonomous trucks to the roads on a large scale. Nvidia’s DriveOS will be integrated into “Aurora Driver.” Continental aims to start producing this level 4 autonomous driving system in series by 2027.