The platform combines the DRIVE AGX Thor chip, safety-certified DriveOS and AI models to accelerate deployment of next-generation self-driving vehicles. At the 2026 GTC conference held in San Jose, California, NVIDIA announced new collaborations with several automakers to advance next-generation Level 4 autonomous driving projects. Among them, BYD, Geely and Nissan will develop mass-production autonomous driving systems based on NVIDIA’s DRIVE Hyperion autonomous vehicle development platform. NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion Ecosystem Parterners DRIVE Hyperion is supported by NVIDIA’s Halos OS safety architecture and built on DriveOS, which has received ASIL D—the highest functional safety certification. The platform also integrates an active safety stack compliant with five-star NCAP standards. On the hardware side, the platform is centered around the DRIVE AGX Thor chip, providing high computing power for autonomous driving systems. DRIVE AGX Several supply chain companies, including Quanta, Hesai and Valeo, have joined the NVIDIA Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab to participate in testing and verification of autonomous driving safety standards. On the software front, NVIDIA released an upgraded open-source model, Alpamayo 1.5, at the conference. The model can process vehicle camera video, navigation data and natural language instructions, generating driving trajectories with reasoning logic. According to official data, the model has been downloaded and used by more than 100,000 automotive developers worldwide since its release. To accelerate validation of Level 4 autonomous driving, NVIDIA also introduced a simulation system called Omniverse NuRec based on 3D Gaussian splatting technology. The platform enables stress testing of autonomous driving decisions and simulation of extreme scenarios, helping reduce the cost of real-world vehicle testing. In addition to BYD and Geely, Isuzu and autonomous driving company TIER IV are also developing Level 4 autonomous buses using the DRIVE AGX Thor chip. ONVO L60 According to NVIDIA’s official information and historical data, Chinese automakers adopting the NVIDIA DRIVE platform include Li Auto (L9), XPeng (G6, G9, P7i), Zeekr (Zeekr 7X), NIO (ONVO L60), Xiaomi (SU7, YU7), and GAC Aion (Hyper GT).
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