International Motors and PlusAI announced they are a step closer to the commercialization of Level 4 autonomous trucks built on the Nvidia Drive AGX Hyperion platform. 

The new factory-built vehicles will feature PlusAI’s SuperDrive virtual driver technology to enable production-ready autonomous trucks for large-scale freight operations, powered by Nvidia’s artificial intelligence computing architecture. 

“Building on our fleet trials in Texas, the collaboration with Nvidia and PlusAI is an important step on our path to production,” said Tobias Glitterstam, senior vice president and chief strategy & transformation officer at International, in a news release.

“By combining automotive-grade computing and AI-native autonomous driving software with our deep customer relationships and insights, we’re supporting the future deployment of autonomous solutions that will deliver real value and reliability to the freight industry.”

International's Collaboration with PlusAI and Nvidia

The three-way collaboration leverages each company's core strengths, according to the news release.

• International brings nearly 200 years of manufacturing expertise and deep understanding of fleet operations, along with an extensive dealer network to manage, service, and maintain autonomous solutions.

• PlusAI contributes its SuperDrive AI-based autonomous driving software, refined over 6 million miles of real-world driving and built on end-to-end AI models to enable dynamic adaptation to diverse routes, geographies, and driving conditions.

• Nvidia provides a range of AI infrastructure, including the Drive AGX Thor centralized compute platform powered by the Nvidia Blackwell architecture, purpose-built for the complex AI workloads required for safe autonomous driving.

“By collaborating with International and Nvidia, we're enabling scalable, factory-built autonomy designed to meet the real-world performance and safety expectations of fleets,” said David Liu, CEO and co-founder at PlusAI, in the release. 

Rishi Dhall, Nvidia vice president of automotive, explained, “By leveraging Drive AGX Thor, PlusAI’s advanced autonomous driving software and International’s proven vehicle platform can operate seamlessly together to enable robust perception, prediction, and planning for safe, efficient, and scalable commercial freight operations.”

International autonomous trucks will be engineered from the factory floor up with lidar, radar and cameras for 360-degree awareness of the vehicle’s surroundings and integrated with the SuperDrive autonomous driving system and Nvidia Drive AGX Thor system-on-a-chip (SoC).

This combination of International’s proven vehicle architecture, PlusAI’s scalable autonomy software, and NVIDIA’s high-performance compute platform provides the redundancy, sensor fusion, and high-speed AI inference needed for safe driverless operation in complex long-haul trucking environments, according to the news release.