Incoming Volvo ES90 uses onboard AI to learn and improve over time

Only a few weeks away from its official launch, Volvo says its new ES90 will use an advanced onboard computer that is eight times better at AI computing than its existing tech. The ES90 is the second vehicle built on Volvo’s Superset tech stack, a modular platform that allows Volvo to design safer cars more efficiently.

Volvo added an NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin platform to the ES90, making its newest vehicle the company’s most potent core computing machine. Each ES90 will be capable of roughly 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS).

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This isn’t the first time Volvo has worked alongside NVIDIA

NVIDIA is an outstanding hardware company that made its name by producing some of the best PC GPUs on the market. The company is now focused on AI and developing an incredible platform for auto companies.

DRIVE AGX Orin was introduced in 2019 as a system-on-a-chip (SoC) with 17 billion transistors integrating NVIDIA GPU architecture and Arm Hercules CPU cores. The DRIVE AGX Orin developer platform notes that the SoC is capable of 254 TOPS, supporting Volvo’s claim that the ES90 has two Orin SoCs onboard.

Volvo previously used NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Xavier and says that future EX90 vehicles will also use NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin.

NVIDIA’s platform will work alongside the Volvo ES90’s single LIDAR array, five radars, eight cameras, and 12 ultrasonic sensors – all supported by “an advanced driver understanding system inside the car.”

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AI is framing the future of Volvo

“The Volvo ES90 is one of the most technically advanced cars on the market today and is designed to be improved further with time,” said Anders Bell, Volvo’s chief engineering and technology officer

The only way to do this is to employ AI, which the NVIDIA Drive AGX Orin is designed to do. The NVIDIA Drive AGX Orin also supports NVIDIA DriveOS, an operating system developed by TensorRT, NVIDIA’s AI deep learning model. Volvo hasn’t said it will use DriveOS for the ES90, but the existing EX90 uses DriveOS as its core computing system. 

Volvo aims to have a supercomputer in each car it produces that learns how you drive and optimizes the vehicle for your driving habits. The automaker envisions a future where your car is hyper-personalized to do things like maximize range in an EV based on your driving habits. Moreover, Volvo’s software-first approach allows it to send over-the-air updates, improving safety features based on metadata.

Final thoughts

Volvo proudly announced that software is now the primary driver of innovation for owners, which is a far cry from the company’s origins when it developed reliable and safe vehicles based on unique hardware.

Volvo still prioritizes safety, even in the software age, and we expect its use of AI and machine learning to result in incredible advancements in EV safety. The more Volvo learns, the safer its drivers are—that’s always been true. Now, it will just happen faster.

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