Karma Automotive, a Southern California-based car company, says its SAE1 Level 4 autonomous van with a battery electric vehicle (BEV) architecture has arrived.
The SAE1 Level 4 autonomous van is one of five platforms designed to offer new electric mobility solutions through extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) and BEV chassis systems.
Karma’s new L4 E-Flex Van is powered by the NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus autonomous vehicle computing platform, which achieves 320 trillion operations per second of deep learning. It is built on a scalable architecture, with two NVIDIA Xavier processors and two Tensor Core GPUs. This energy-efficient AI computer runs an array of deep neural networks simultaneously for safe, highly automated and fully autonomous driving. The L4 van’s software platform and sensors suite are supported by WeRide, which covers a full 360-degree field of view and provides precise, real-time localizations powered by multiple sensors including LiDar, radar, camera, GNSS and INS.
“Using the E-Flex Platform, our goal was to create collaborative partnerships that address a wide array of applications,” says Srini Gowda, vice president of autonomous driving at Karma Automotive. “By working with technology partners like WeRide and NVIDIA, we intend to offer market solutions with greater speed and efficiency.”
The Karma L4 van is the latest in a series of development projects featuring the Karma E-Flex Platform. Recently, Karma debuted its first product in the series, an EREV E-Flex Platform based on its 2020 Revero GT. Additional demonstration platforms to be revealed in the coming months include autonomously driven vehicles, high-performance supercar platforms and more.
Karma’s E-Flex Platform can be configured up to 22 different ways, including installation of SAE L4 technology on both BEV and EREV platforms.
Photo: Karma Automotive’s Level 4 E-Flex van
