Hyundai Motor Company and Kia are expanding their strategic collaboration with NVIDIA in the fields of autonomous driving and Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) as part of their future mobility endeavors. Hyundai and Kia plan to merge their SDV capabilities with NVIDIA’s expertise in the autonomous driving sector to jointly develop next-generation autonomous driving solutions.
Starting with selected vehicle models, Hyundai and Kia will proactively apply NVIDIA’s Level 2 or higher autonomous driving technology. In the long term, the companies aim to establish a collaborative system extended to Level 4 robotaxis. Partnering with the U.S.-based autonomous joint venture, Motional, they will focus on advancing technology for Level 4 robotaxis and strengthening competitiveness in technology and services.
The collaboration is a strategic decision by the Hyundai Motor Group to accelerate the internalization of autonomous driving technology. To facilitate this, the group will introduce the ‘NVIDIA DRIVE HYPERION’ platform, building a new integrated architecture that can be expanded from Level 2 to Level 4 autonomous driving. HYPERION includes essential hardware for autonomous driving such as high-performance central processing units (CPUs), graphical processing units (GPUs), sensors, and cameras.
The strategic partnership with NVIDIA is also expected to significantly benefit the Hyundai Motor Group in terms of AI internalization. By adopting HYPERION, they intend to establish a virtuous data cycle that involves collecting various types of data such as visual, language, and behavior, improving AI training and performance, and applying these enhancements to real vehicles.
Additionally, Hyundai Motor Group plans to leverage NVIDIA’s extensive data and AI technology to integrate group-wide data within a single training pipeline. From a long-term perspective, they anticipate that high-performance AI will autonomously gather, learn, and structure high-quality real-road data, thereby enhancing the group’s competitive edge in autonomous driving.
Ultimately, Hyundai Motor Group aims to internalize top-tier autonomous driving technology and provide it to its customers. By continuing to partner with global tech companies and developing its technology, the group plans to strengthen its global response capabilities in autonomous driving from multiple angles.
Hyungsoo Kim, Vice President and Head of Global Strategy Organization at Hyundai Motor Group, stated, “Expanding our partnership with NVIDIA will be a pivotal momentum toward realizing Hyundai Motor Group’s vision of safe and reliable autonomous driving technology. We will secure differentiated technological competitiveness ranging from Level 2 and above autonomous driving technologies to Level 4 robotaxi services, supported by a unified team collaboration framework across the group.”
Rishi Dhall, Vice President of NVIDIA’s Automotive Division, commented, “We are combining NVIDIA’s computing and AI technology with Hyundai Motor Group’s vehicle engineering capabilities to build a safe and intelligent autonomous driving system. We will continue the collaboration across advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) from Level 2 and above to robotaxis.”