All Jaguar Land Rover cars from 2025 will feature autonomous driving, to work on Nvidia’s platform

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced a partnership with Nvidia, under which all cars from Jaguar and Land Rover would feature autonomous driving capabilities powered by Nvidia starting 2025. The cars would use Nvidia’s Drive platform, which includes its Drive Orin autonomous vehicle (AV) platform, artificial intelligence powered safety and security systems, and surround sensors.

The JLR group will also use Nvidia’s DGX platform for training AI algorithms that will power the car’s autonomous driving credentials. The company will also use Drive Sim, a part of Nvidia’s Omniverse mixed reality offering, which JLR will use to simulate real world situations to train the algorithms on safety and security features.

Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, said upon the partnership, “Next-generation cars will transform automotive into one of the largest and most advanced technology industries. Fleets of software-defined, programmable cars will offer new functionalities and services for the life of the vehicles.”

The Nvidia Drive Hyperion autonomous driving platform allows car manufacturers to customise their autonomous car offerings, such as JLR using its own data centre and algorithms to power certain safety features of the vehicle. Nvidia has already signed deals with other car makers such as Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo to offer its software for autonomous driving technologies.

To be sure, car manufacturers have been increasingly rolling out advancements in autonomous driving features such as self-parking, automatic emergency braking and more. For instance, in December 2021, Mercedes-Benz announced that it has received clearance from a United Nations regulatory body to offer Level 3 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) features in its cars.

Volvo, too, said in January this year that it plans to begin pilot operations of level 3 ADAS features in its flagship XC90 SUV in select regions.

ADAS is typically classified into five levels. Level one of autonomous driving typically includes basic driver assistance features such as cruise control, which allows a car to maintain a specified speed, and can be engaged or disengaged manually. Level two is what many car makers have already been offering for a few years. For instance, Volvo and Mercedes Benz’s cars already offer features such as autonomous braking, lane maintenance and adaptive cruise control features. Level three, which is what many companies are earmarking for this year, includes more advanced awareness from cars.

JLR has not specified if it is aiming for level five ADAS approval to put on roads starting 2025. It has also not specified the cars with which the technologies would be launched, but the same is likely to be introduced in the more expensive cars – before trickling down to the company’s entry-level range of sedans and SUVs.