BYD Humiliates Tesla with Its Autonomous Technology

While Tesla is still waiting for Chinese approvals to hit the road, BYD is achieving feats with its in-house City Pilot system.

While Elon Musk desperately tries to launch Tesla’s autonomous technology in China, BYD has already conducted several tests of its City Pilot system. In its defense, Tesla has just received the green light from Beijing to begin testing its system on public roads in China with a limited fleet of 10 vehicles.

Even though it’s paradoxically too early to say it’s too late, a number of major electric vehicle manufacturers like NIO or XPeng are already offering their own autonomous driving solutions. For example, NIO recently delivered an impressive demonstration with one of its cars that exited the highway, went to a battery swap station, replaced its battery pack in just 3 minutes, and reached its final destination—all without a single human intervention!

Terror on the streets

But we know that the ultimate test of autonomous driving systems is urban traffic. Nothing is more complicated for a driver, whether human or computer, than the streets of a large city, and it is in this hostile environment that BYD made a significant impact with a flawless demonstration that concluded at night. The BYD Denza N7 SUV equipped with City Pilot successfully navigated the urban jungle, performing complex maneuvers in narrow streets with traffic.

BYD Spends Without Counting

Unlike Tesla’s FSD system that relies on a visual approach, Chinese electric vehicles generally rely on more cameras, LiDAR, and other sensors to assess urban traffic, and BYD’s cars are no exception. BYD has already invested more than $14 billion in autonomous vehicle AI research, with 5,000 engineers working full-time on its development.

However, unlike Tesla, BYD has chosen to equip only its premium models as standard, while cars priced under 40,000 euros will not have it, or it will be offered as an option at a fairly high price. Tesla now has to generalize it to have a chance to compete with the Middle Kingdom.

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