# DiffusionDriveV2: Reinforcement Learning-Constrained Truncated Diffusion Modeling in End-to-End Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07745 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07745/

## Key facts

- Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 49 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)
- End-to-end autonomous driving / [Imitation-learning end-to-end planners](https://mlsanity.com/driving/imitation-learning-end-to-end-planners/)
- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [RL for autonomous driving and traffic](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/rl-for-autonomous-driving-and-traffic/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03300/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Models Beat GANs on Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.05233/) (2021)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Diffusion Policy: Visuomotor Policy Learning via Action Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04137/) (2023)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [Planning with Diffusion for Flexible Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09991/) (2022)
- [ByteTrack: Multi-Object Tracking by Associating Every Detection Box](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06864/) (2021)
- [BEVDet: High-performance Multi-camera 3D Object Detection in Bird-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11790/) (2021)
- [VAD: Vectorized Scene Representation for Efficient Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12077/) (2023)
- [NuPlan: A closed-loop ML-based planning benchmark for autonomous vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11810/) (2021)
- [FairMOT: On the Fairness of Detection and Re-Identification in Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01888/) (2020)
- [TransFuser: Imitation with Transformer-Based Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15997/) (2022)
- [MultiPath: Multiple Probabilistic Anchor Trajectory Hypotheses for Behavior Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.05449/) (2019)
- [NAVSIM: Data-Driven Non-Reactive Autonomous Vehicle Simulation and Benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15349/) (2024)
- [DiffusionDrive: Truncated Diffusion Model for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15139/) (2024)
- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [BEVFormer v2: Adapting Modern Image Backbones to Bird's-Eye-View Recognition via Perspective Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10439/) (2022)
- [VADv2: End-to-End Vectorized Autonomous Driving via Probabilistic Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13243/) (2024)
- [Diffusion Policy Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00588/) (2024)
- [Hydra-MDP: End-to-end Multimodal Planning with Multi-target Hydra-Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06978/) (2024)
- [MultiPath++: Efficient Information Fusion and Trajectory Aggregation for Behavior Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14973/) (2021)
- [CenterMask : Real-Time Anchor-Free Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.06667/) (2019)
- [ReCogDrive: A Reinforced Cognitive Framework for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08052/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [Vision-Language-Action Models for Autonomous Driving: Past, Present, and Future](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16760/) (2025)
- [SparseDriveV2: Scoring is All You Need for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29163/) (2026)
- [DriveFine: Refining-Augmented Masked Diffusion VLA for Precise and Robust Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14577/) (2026)
- [SpanVLA: Efficient Action Bridging and Learning from Negative-Recovery Samples for Vision-Language-Action Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19710/) (2026)
- [DriveFuture: Future-Aware Latent World Models for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09701/) (2026)
- [EponaV2: Driving World Model with Comprehensive Future Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14696/) (2026)
- [ExploreVLA: Dense World Modeling and Exploration for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02714/) (2026)
- [CLOVER: Closed-Loop Value Estimation and Ranking for End-to-End Autonomous Driving Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15120/) (2026)
- [BridgeSim: Unveiling the OL-CL Gap in End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10856/) (2026)
- [RAD-2: Scaling Reinforcement Learning in a Generator-Discriminator Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.15308/) (2026)
- [World Engine: Towards the Era of Post-Training for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.19836/) (2026)
- [WA-JEPA: Rethinking the Video JEPA Paradigm for World-Action Modeling in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20974/) (2026)
- [Senna-2: Aligning VLM and End-to-End Driving Policy for Consistent Decision Making and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11219/) (2026)
- [MDrive: Benchmarking Closed-Loop Cooperative Driving for End-to-End Multi-agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10904/) (2026)
- [HAD: Combining Hierarchical Diffusion with Metric-Decoupled RL for End-to-End Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03581/) (2026)
- [Discrete-WAM: Unified Discrete Vision-Action Token Editing for World-Policy Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05645/) (2026)
- [EvoDriveVLA: Evolving Driving VLA Models via Collaborative Perception-Planning Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09465/) (2026)
- [DriveJudge: Rethinking Autonomous Driving Evaluation with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17362/) (2026)
- [CRAFT: Counterfactual-to-Interactive Reinforcement Fine-Tuning for Driving Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04470/) (2026)
- [NTR: Neural Token Reconstruction for Scene Token Bottleneck in End-to-End Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31116/) (2026)
- [DriveMA: Driving Vision-Language-Action Models with verifiable Meta-Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31271/) (2026)
- [IDOL: Inverse-Dynamics-Guided Future Prediction for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31476/) (2026)
- [CLEAR: Cognition and Latent Evaluation for Adaptive Routing in End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06219/) (2026)
- [DriveReward: A Comprehensive Dataset and Generative Vision-Language Reward Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08525/) (2026)
- [ForgeDrive: Bidirectional Cross-Conditioning for Unified Visual-Action Generation in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31226/) (2026)
- [From Representational Complementarity to Dual Systems: Synergizing VLM and Vision-Only Backbones for End-to-End Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10719/) (2026)
- [Driving Intents Amplify Planning-Oriented Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12625/) (2026)
- [Causality-Aware End-to-End Autonomous Driving via Ego-Centric Joint Scene Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13646/) (2026)
- [DriveMA: Rethinking Language Interfaces in Driving VLAs with One-Step Meta-Actions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21273/) (2026)
- [DriveAnchor: Progressive Anchor-based Flow Learning for Autonomous Driving Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00519/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Generative diffusion models for end-to-end autonomous driving often suffer from mode collapse, tending to generate conservative and homogeneous behaviors. While DiffusionDrive employs predefined anchors representing different driving intentions to partition the action space and generate diverse trajectories, its reliance on imitation learning lacks sufficient constraints, resulting in a dilemma between diversity and consistent high quality. In this work, we propose DiffusionDriveV2, which leverages reinforcement learning to both constrain low-quality modes and explore for superior trajectories. This significantly enhances the overall output quality while preserving the inherent multimodality of its core Gaussian Mixture Model. First, we use scale-adaptive multiplicative noise, ideal for trajectory planning, to promote broad exploration. Second, we employ intra-anchor GRPO to manage advantage estimation among samples generated from a single anchor, and inter-anchor truncated GRPO to incorporate a global perspective across different anchors, preventing improper advantage comparisons between distinct intentions (e.g., turning vs. going straight), which can lead to further mode collapse. DiffusionDriveV2 achieves 91.2 PDMS on the NAVSIM v1 dataset and 85.5 EPDMS on the NAVSIM v2 dataset in closed-loop evaluation with an aligned ResNet-34 backbone, setting a new record. Further experiments validate that our approach resolves the dilemma between diversity and consistent high quality for truncated diffusion models, achieving the best trade-off. Code and model will be available at https://github.com/hustvl/DiffusionDriveV2