At the recent 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang excitedly announced that the "ChatGPT moment" for physical AI has arrived. He predicted that in the future, one billion cars will achieve high or full autonomy, with driverless taxis being the first beneficiaries of this revolutionary progress.
During a press conference in Las Vegas, Huang showcased NVIDIA's emerging products, especially the open-source model Alpamayo for the field of autonomous driving. This model is the world's first open-source AI system capable of thinking and reasoning, specifically designed for autonomous vehicles. Compared to Chinese companies such as Li Auto, XPeng, and NIO, although NVIDIA is slightly behind in R&D progress, its open-source strategy will provide practical solutions for enterprises that do not have full-stack R&D capabilities.
Photo Source: NVIDIA
The first generation of Alpamayo uses a 10-billion-parameter architecture, which is not only adjustable for developers but also serves as a foundational tool for autonomous driving development. At the same time, NVIDIA also released a simulation tool called AlpaSim, as well as an open dataset containing more than 1,700 hours of driving data, aiming to promote the development of autonomous driving technology.
Although Alpamayo mainly targets L4-level autonomous driving, in the competitive L2-level driver assistance market, NVIDIA still needs to make greater efforts. Jensen Huang also revealed that the 2025 Mercedes-Benz CLA will be equipped with NVIDIA's L2-level full-stack driver assistance solution, based on two NVIDIA Thor chips, planned to be launched in the U.S. and European markets this year.
NVIDIA's layout in the field of autonomous driving has been supported by Wu Xinzhou, former head of intelligent driving at XPeng. Despite challenges such as communication between the US and Chinese teams and slow work pace, Wu Xinzhou is working hard to improve product experience. In April 2024, NVIDIA's no-map city NOA demo version did not meet expectations, but Wu Xinzhou stated that the new version's performance has significantly improved, and software updates will be released every quarter in the future.
Although NVIDIA is still catching up with local competitors in the Chinese market, its potential in the European and American markets remains significant. With the release of Alpamayo and cooperation with Mercedes-Benz, NVIDIA is striving to regain its voice in the field of autonomous driving.
