Mercedes to roll out NVIDIA-powered car within 12 months

Most of NVIDIA's announcements at CES were related to self-driving car technology. The company revealed it has deals with ZF Group and Bosch to implement its platform in a wide range of applications and also announced a cooperation with Audi to put advanced, level 4 self-driving cars on the road by 2020.

Today another major design win was announced during the Mercedes Benz Inspiration talk at CES 2017. NVIDIA founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and Mercedes-Benz Vice President of Digital Vehicle and Mobility, Sajjad Khan took the stage and announced a product is coming within 12 months. But despite the perfuse use of the word "AI" in the announcement, no specifics were shared about what Mercedes is shooting for.

NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz have been cooperating for three years, the companies claim they have a common vision about how AI can change your driving experience for the better.

“At this point it is very clear that AI is going to be the future of computing. This is an endeavor that we started three years ago that we will put on the road next year – unbelievable,” Jen-Hsun said.

“I am very proud of saying that within 12 months we are rolling out a product with NVIDIA,” Khan added.

The work is part of an ongoing collaboration focused on deep learning and artificial intelligence.

“This breakthrough called deep learning happened several years ago, and it has completely revolutionized computing from the way you speak to your phone now to the way you take photos and upload to the cloud and how it automatically tags and hosts it for you,” Jen-Hsun said.

“We have teams co-located with each other,” Khan said. “We have an office in Sunnyvale. Jen-Hsun has a team in Stuttgart.”

“Mercedes-Benz and NVIDIA share a common vision of the AI car. At this point it is clear AI will revolutionize the future of automobiles,” Jen-Hsun said.

Here's a look at a prototype car from Mercedes that features NVIDIA Drive CX, the company's automotive cockpit computer: