Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz to bring an AI car to market within a year

Nvidia already announced a partnership at CES to bring a AI self-driving car to production, and now Mercedes-Benz is also teaming up with the GPU-maker on a vehicle with AI on board. Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz are also setting an ambitious timeline for their goal; the two will field this new vehicle within the next 12 months, Nvidia confirmed to TechCrunch.

The news came out on stage at a talk between Mercedes-Benz VP of Digital Vehicle and Mobility Sajjad Khan, and Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang on Friday at CES. It’s the result of a project the two began together three years ago, which helps explain why the car will be ready to get to customers by 2018.

Mercedes and Nvidia have been working together with a specific focus on deep learning and AI. Nvidia announced additional AI features powered by its in-car computing at its keynote earlier in the week at CES. These include Co-Pilot, which is a system that combines facial recognition, gaze tracking and more to help assist human drivers as a way to increase safety ahead of the advent of true autonomous driving on the roads.

Co-Pilot also uses voice recognition, and a vehicle’s external sensors to track objects outside the car including other vehicles and pedestrians, and can give the driver a head’s up if it also detects they might not be aware of potential road danger.

It’s not yet clear how the AI integration will work in the Mercedes-Benz vehicle, and whether it will be a version of Co-Pilot or something else, but Nvidia tells TechCrunch it will provide more details leading up to the launch.