SHANGHAI — Build Your Dreams (BYD) plans to offer an autopilot system in nearly all its cars, making autonomous driving affordable to all mainland Chinese customers as the world's largest electric-vehicle (EV) maker seeks a competitive edge in an escalating price war.
At least 21 models - including the Seagull hatchback priced from as low as 69,800 yuan (US$9,554) - will be fitted with its indigenous advanced driver assistance system, or ADAS, which enables cars to navigate on highways and conduct self-parking, the Shenzhen-based company said on Monday.
The system, known as God's Eye, "will mark a new era when all customers can access smart driving", founder and chairman Wang Chuanfu said.
The ADAS system would beat market expectations, built on 5,000 engineers' painstaking research over the past seven years, he added.
BYD's announcement echoed a bullish industry projection that 15 million new cars, or two-thirds of national sales in 2025, would be fitted with a preliminary autonomous-driving system as EV makers step up their offerings to win customers and Beijing extended a subsidy programme to spur big-ticket consumption.
Zhang Yongwei, general secretary of China EV100, a non-governmental organisation that counts most of the nation's top EV executives as members, said the 15 million intelligent cars would feature at least Level 2 (L2) self-driving capabilities including steering, acceleration and deceleration, but still require drivers to take control or intervene at any time.
"We believe BYD's acceleration of autopilot progress will have a meaningful impact on the market given its position as industry leader," Goldman Sachs analysts Tina Hou and Sylvia Hu wrote in a research note last weekend.
New cars, among them new China-built electric vehicles of the company BYD, are seen parked in the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, on Oct 24, 2024. (Photo: Reuters)
BYD would catch up with its rivals in terms of developing navigate-on-autopilot technologies, they added.
BYD, known for its blade battery packs, builds low-priced electric cars that resonate with millions of local and overseas drivers for their value-for-money appeal. Currently, most China-made cars featuring preliminary autonomous driving systems are priced above 150,000 yuan.
Still, BYD has been lagging behind its domestic rivals like Xpeng and Nio in developing intelligent EVs because of its insufficient experience in digital technology.
That will change, Wang said.
"We have been adopting a strategy - fewer words, more deeds - over the past years in our research and development," he added. "BYD has a firm belief in smart driving and has been unswervingly delving into this area."
Autonomous driving is graded in five levels of sophistication. In China, most intelligent vehicles are classified as L2 or L2+ under the standards set by US-based SAE International. These levels stipulate that the driver must be alert and ready to take control at any time.
The cost of an ADAS has dropped over the last two years on economy of scale and rising sales of intelligent cars in China.
It now stands at about 10,000 yuan, according to Chen Jinzhu, CEO of Shanghai Mingliang Auto Service, a consultancy. It cost about twice as much three years ago, according to one estimate.
Xpeng and Huawei Technologies-backed EV maker Aito are viewed as China's market leaders in self-driving.
Tesla, which is expected to start testing its Full Self-Driving system on the mainland later this year, charges US$8,000 to install the system in the US, on top of a US$99 monthly subscription.