Nvidia Corp. announced late Tuesday a partnership with German car maker Daimler AG and auto-parts giant Bosch Ltd. on a robot taxi project that will begin testing in less than a year.
Under a partnership announced late Tuesday, Daimler DAI, +0.26% and Bosch BSWQY, +0.00% hope to use Nvidia’s NVDA, +1.60% Pegasus AI chipset to power a fleet of Level 4 and Level 5 — with the latter meaning fully autonomous — taxis by “early next decade.”
“It’s happening very soon,” Nvidia spokesman Hector Marinez said in a conference call Tuesday. “There’s a lot of work that’s been going on behind the scene, of course, before today’s announcement. It’s not like we’re just starting today, so it’s well along its way.”
Nvidia said that it will begin testing the vehicles in Silicon Valley and Stuttgart sometime next year.
“That’s the initial plan, but it will quickly evolve beyond that,” Marinez said.
In a statement, Bosch said “Nvidia will provide its Drive Pegasus platform powered by high performance AI automotive processors along with system software that will process the vehicle-driving algorithms generated by Bosch and Daimler using machine-learning methods.”
Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed.
Back in March, Nvidia said it was halting tests of self-driving cars on public roads following a pedestrian death involving an Uber Technologies self-driving vehicle in Arizona. In May, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang told MarketWatch the pause in self-driving auto tests was not holding the company’s auto business back and that cars should be back out in public “pretty soon.”
Nvidia stock has continued a long run higher this year on hopes for its autonomous-car unit and the performance of its server chips, both of which are fueled by graphics chips utilizing machine-learning techniques. Nvidia shares have gained 30.9% so far this year, while the S&P 500 index has increased 4.5%.
