With its E-Flex electrified platform, Karma Automotive presents an extremely versatile chassis that offers new solutions for the mobility of electric vehicles, ranging from autonomously driven commercial vehicles to everyday vehicles to high-performance supercars. Now there is an outlook on an electrical architecture with self-driving functionality at level 4 (level 4/L4).
The American automaker presents the new level 4 autonomous Van E-flex platform, second of the five E-Flex platforms, SAE Level 4 Autonomous van system compatible with two and four-engine propulsion. L4 is the preliminary stage of autonomous driving, in which the vehicle navigates most of its journey independently. The driver must still be able to drive in order to be able to intervene if necessary.
For the L4 E-Flex Van, Karma relies on solutions from the US semiconductor specialist NVIDIA and the Chinese startup WeRide. The technology offers industry-leading computing power for safe, highly automated to fully autonomous driving, works energy-efficiently, and is scalable, it says.
The model is powered by a 320 trillion machine-per-second NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Pegasus computing module with machine learning support, which includes two NVIDIA Xavier processors and two Tensor Core GPUs. The L4 truck’s software platform and sensor suite are WeRide compliant, covering a full 360-degree field of view (field of view) and providing accurate real-time locations with multiple sensors, including LiDAR, radar, camera, GNSS and INS. Other specifications of the model are not disclosed.
“Using the E-Flex Platform, our goal was to create collaborative partnerships that address a wide array of applications,” said Srini Gowda, Karma Automotive’s VP of Autonomous Driving/ADAS. “By working with nimble technology leaders like WeRide and NVIDIA, we intend to offer unique market solutions with greater speed and efficiency.“
Karma introduced the E-Flex Platform in early April 2020. With the modular E-Flex platform, up to 22 different configurations are possible, which include various battery pack variants and different drive systems. Further possible products will be shown on E-Flex in the coming months.
