Software-defined safety will change how fleets buy vehicles

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, and Håkan Samuelsson, president and CEO of Volvo Cars

Volvo Cars is expanding its partnership with NVIDIA to develop future automated-driving and safety technology.

The next phase will combine Volvo’s safety systems with NVIDIA’s Hyperion sensor and compute architecture, Halos OS and Alpamayo driving software, with the technology set to debut in a next-generation Volvo.

For fleet managers, the wider significance is how vehicle safety is becoming increasingly software-led.

Driver-assistance systems are moving towards central computing platforms, with functionality potentially improving through updates rather than remaining fixed at the point of purchase.

That creates new fleet-procurement questions.

How long will a manufacturer support the software? Can safety systems be updated remotely? What happens when sensors, cameras or computing hardware require repair? And how will increasingly complex systems affect downtime and maintenance?

Fleet buyers have traditionally compared safety features as part of vehicle specification. In future, they may also need to compare the software ecosystem behind them.

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