The EX90 was a guest star at the NVIDIA GTC 2024

San Jose likes to promote itself as the capital of Silicon Valley. Some of the biggest names in the tech industry have their head office here, while other tech giants are headquartered in nearby towns such as Cupertino, Mountain View and Santa Clara.

In other words, it’s not strange that NVIDIA organises their annual GTC conference in San Jose. This year, we joined the event and brought along our fully electric flagship SUV EX90, which was placed on display in the automotive pavilion.

Of course, we brought the EX90 on purpose. It's the first of our new generation of cars equipped with a powerful core computing system, based on highly advanced NVIDIA computing technology that helps us to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI). These cars are also always connected, always collecting and receiving data, and defined by software developed in-house.

The NVIDIA DRIVE system-on-a-chip inside the EX90 contains deep learning accelerators and is built for the specific purpose of AI applications and edge computing. This means that applications can run fully or almost fully in the car, as opposed to only in the cloud.

Especially in terms of active safety and advanced driver assistance systems, AI promises vast potential improvements. Through advanced AI applications, we believe we can take significant leaps in boosting safety and get ever closer to our vision of zero collisions, as our CEO Jim Rowan explains in this LinkedIn article that was published this week in conjunction with NVIDIA GTC.

“Right now, we are on the verge of another major breakthrough in safety inside and around our cars and AI is a defining factor,” writes Jim. “We can collect data from the real world at a scale that is incomparable to what is possible through occasional read-outs or by having engineers driving test vehicles. Instead of developing features based on data from hundreds of cars, we can now develop them based on data from hundreds of thousands of cars within a few years.”

While Jim marked the occasion of GTC via LinkedIn, our global head of software engineering Alwin Bakkenes was on site in San Jose. Apart from engagements with local and global media, Alwin also joined a fire side chat with Ali Kani, vice-president and general manager of automotive at NVIDIA.

Alwin’s main message was that at Volvo Cars, we’re very intentional about the technologies we focus on – core computing, connectivity, over-the-air updates, and software – to deliver on our purpose. They help us further enhance safety while delivering a truly remarkable customer experience that aims to make the lives of our customers easier and more enjoyable.

Our collaboration with NVIDIA is a great example of our general approach to partnerships. We believe in collaborating with tech leaders all over the world, both large and small. While we control certain technology development in-house, we also work together with tech companies to leverage the best technologies available and give our customers the best possible experiences.