LAS VEGAS—Aurora, Continental, and Nvidia have entered into a long-term partnership to deploy driverless trucks at scale, powered by the next-generation Nvidia Drive Thor system-on-a-chip. Nvidia’s Drive Thor and DriveOS will be integrated into the Aurora Driver, an SAE Level 4 autonomous driving system that Continental plans to mass-manufacture in 2027.
“The combination of Nvidia's automotive-grade Drive Thor platform with Aurora’s advanced self-driving trucking technology and Continental’s manufacturing and integration expertise is set to help drive the future of autonomous trucking, helping make roads safer while driving up operational efficiency,” Rishi Dhall, VP of automotive at Nvidia, said.
Aurora is in the final stages of validating the Aurora Driver for driverless operations on public roads. The Aurora Driver is equipped with a computer and sensors, including lidar, radar, and cameras, enabling it to operate at highway speeds. Verifiable AI enables the Aurora Driver to adapt to new operating domains while being validated through Aurora's Safety Case, a tool for regulatory trust and public acceptance. Aurora plans to launch its driverless trucking service in Texas in April 2025.
See also: Fleets Explained: Autonomous vehicles
Nvidia will power the primary computer of the Aurora Driver with a dual Nvidia Drive Thor SoC configuration that runs DriveOS. DRIVE Thor is designed to accelerate inference tasks critical for autonomous vehicles to understand and navigate the world around them. As Continental and Aurora prepare to manufacture self-driving hardware at scale in 2027, production samples of Drive Thor are coming in the first half of 2025.
Continental is developing a reliable, cost-efficient generation of the Aurora Driver hardware for high-volume manufacturing. The company is also developing a specialized independent secondary system that can take over operation if a failure occurs in the primary Aurora Driver computer. With the start of production planned for 2027, Continental will test prototypes of the future hardware kit in the coming months. The company will then integrate Drive Thor with DriveOS into the primary Aurora Driver computer at its manufacturing facilities and ship the full hardware kit to Aurora’s truck OEM partners for integration into customers’ trucks.
