NVIDIA made waves at CES 2026 when CEO Jensen Huang revealed Alpamayo, an AI model family specifically designed to accelerate robotaxi launches. The system claims to use reasoning capabilities to tackle those pesky “long-tail” driving scenarios that have stumped autonomous vehicles for years. Nice try, Jensen.
Musk has long maintained that achieving 99% autonomy is relatively straightforward. It’s that last 1% – the weird edge cases like a mattress flying off a truck or a child chasing a ball – that’s the real headache. “Super hard,” as he puts it. Tesla’s approach involves an end-to-end large model that’s vertically integrated with in-house hardware.
Getting to 99% autonomy is easy. The last 1% with flying mattresses and ball-chasing kids? That’s where self-driving truly fails.
NVIDIA, meanwhile, is taking a platform approach. They’re not building cars; they’re enabling others to join the self-driving party. Their strategy? Open-source models for partners while providing the full stack for training, simulation, and in-vehicle computing. They’re already working with Tesla, Waymo, XPeng, and Nuro.
Interestingly, NVIDIA‘s Huang has actually praised Tesla’s FSD as “impressive” and “state-of-the-art.” The companies aren’t exactly enemies – NVIDIA remains a critical supplier to both Tesla and Musk’s xAI venture.
The autonomous driving landscape at CES 2026 was practically an NVIDIA showcase, with partners like Mercedes-Benz jumping on the Alpamayo bandwagon. Mercedes-Benz is set to become the first major automaker to implement the Alpamayo technology in their CLA sedan by early 2026. NVIDIA predicts hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles within a decade.
But Musk remains skeptical about how quickly NVIDIA’s partners can scale. Musk confidently projected that significant competition for Tesla in the autonomous driving space wouldn’t materialize for another 5-6 years. Despite having access to NVIDIA’s impressive tools, he noted the auto industry “does very little on their own.” Classic Musk confidence – or hubris? Only time will tell which approach wins the self-driving race.
References
- https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-gives-honest-take-on-when-tesla-will-see-serious-fsd-competition/
- https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-nvidia-alpamayo-self-driving-robotaxi-2026-1
- https://electrek.co/2026/01/07/elon-musk-wishes-nvidia-luck-self-driving-stays-strangely-silent-on-hyundais-humanoid-robot/
- https://www.thestreet.com/automotive/elon-musk-drops-surprise-take-as-nvidia-unveils-new-tesla-fsd-rival
- https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/musk-says-nvidias-av-models-wont-threaten-teslas-fsd-several-years
