All-New Mercedes-Benz CLA Debuts NVIDIA DRIVE AV Software

The all-new Mercedes-Benz CLA will feature the NVIDIA DRIVE AV, a new software with enhanced level 2 point-to-point driver assistance capabilities for U.S. roads. The technology was unveiled at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
 

Mercedes-Benz announces that the era of AI-defined transportation has arrived. In Vegas, the official presentation involved a video demonstration of the AI-powered Mercedes-Benz CLA driving through the streets of San Francisco, with an occupant sitting in the driver’s seat, keeping their hands off the steering wheel most of the time.
 
The enhanced Level 2 driver-assistance system will go into production in the United States this year, opening a new world of software opportunities for NVIDIA across the automotive industry.
 
The NVIDIA DRIVE AV will make its production debut in the Mercedes-Benz CLA, which is the German automaker’s first model to feature the MB.OS platform. It is Mercedes’ new operating system developed to replace the aging MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User Experience), which made its debut at CES back in 2018.
 
The all-new MB.OS introduces advanced driver-assistance features and is powered by NVIDIA’s full-stack DRIVE AV software, AI infrastructure, and accelerated computing, involving over-the-air updates.
 
Scheduled upgrades of the MB.DRIVE ASSIST PRO, which has already been available in China since the end of 2025, are expected to be offered e ex-factory and through the Mercedes-Benz Store. The system contributed to the CLA’s five-star rating in the European New Car Assessment Program (EuroNCAP) for safety.
 
MB.DRIVE ASSIST PRO integrates 30 sensors, 10 cameras, five radar sensors, and 12 ultrasonic sensors, which provide data to an extremely powerful supercomputer, capable of up to 508 trillions of operations per second (TOPs).
 

Ali Kani, Vice President of Automotive at NVIDIA, explains that the company he works for is the intelligence backbone that makes every vehicle programmable, updatable, and continually improving through data and software.
 
“Starting with Mercedes-Benz and its incredible new CLA, we’re celebrating a stunning achievement in safety, design, engineering, and AI-powered driving that will turn every car into a living, learning machine,” Kani added.
 
The NVIDIA DRIVE AV is based on an AI end-to-end stack for core driving and a parallel classical safety stack, built on NVIDIA Halos safety system. Vehicles equipped with this technology can learn from vast amounts of real and synthetic driving data, thereby offering assistance to drivers in navigating various environments with human-like decision-making.
 
The architecture enables advanced level 2 automated driving capabilities, such as driving through crowded cities, providing active safety with proactive collision avoidance, and automated parking in tight spaces that would be quite a challenge for drivers.
 
The NVIDIA-powered driving systems share a cloud-to-car development pipeline, which is capable of transforming real-world data into billions of simulated miles, which accelerates improvement.
 
NVIDIA and Mercedes-Benz are also planning to transform car manufacturing through a digital-first approach based on the NVIDIA Omniverse libraries. This means that engineers will use digital twins of the factories and assembly lines to design, plan, and optimize operations to reduce downtime.