Car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover to test autonomous cars at three new sites

Software engineers from JLR and Nvidia were said to have been working together “side by side” on the project for months before its announcement in February 2022. “Co-development is so very important, and so key, in this partnership,” JLR strategy director François Dossa said last year.

“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, vice-president 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.”

No financial terms of the deal have been disclosed, nor has a precise timeframe been given for the duration of the partnership.

As part of the development process, JLR and Nvidia’s engineers will work to build a pool of data for the purposes of ‘training’ the autonomous driving platform, which will then be used to create real-time, physically accurate simulations on Nvidia’s virtual ‘Omniverse’ platform.

Asked if JLR had concerns about Nvidia’s existing partnerships with other car makers, including Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, Dossa said: “The important thing is that all OEMs have their electrical architecture and they’re all different. In our case, we call it EVA.