BYD Is Leading The EV Revolution, & Now Autonomous Driving Too?

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BYD is outperforming Tesla in several critical areas according to ABI Research. In its latest report, which compares the performance of 18 electric car manufacturers, it ranked BYD number one, with Tesla just slightly behind in second place. In addition to those two top rated companies, ABI also looked at GAC Aion, General Motors, Hyundai-Kia, Stellantis, Volkswagen, XPeng, Zeekr, BMW, Ford, Honda, Mercedes Benz, NIO, Nissan, Renault, Toyota, and Volvo.

“The EV market is rapidly growing and is the clear future of the automotive industry. OEMs have had widely differing responses to the EV transition as an opportunity and a challenge; some have fully embraced the technology, while others are being dragged into it against their wishes. This is reflected in their innovation and implementation capabilities,” explains Dylan Khoo, Industry Analyst at ABI Research.

Nine criteria were chosen for this analysis, divided into two groups — innovation and implementation. These included each company’s battery technology, platform design, coverage of different vehicle segments, and electrified share of sales. BYD and Tesla stand out as the overall market leaders, according to its analysis. Zeekr, XPeng, and GAC Aion were also notable for their strong performance in the innovation rankings. Tesla scored strongly in vehicle range, platform innovation, and fast charging capabilities. However, BYD significantly outperformed Tesla with its degree of vertical integration and the number of models it offers in different segments.

“The automotive industry is in a state of transition, and this assessment demonstrates the varying capabilities of OEMs as they try to make it through this period and come out on top. In some areas, the new upstart EV brands are a generation ahead of many ‘legacy OEMs’. The incumbents must look to technology solutions providers to revolutionize their capabilities and ensure they can maintain their position as the industry electrifies,” Khoo concludes.

BYD To Use Huawei Self-Driving Technology

Ten years ago, electric cars were all anyone was talking about. Today, the conversation has shifted to autonomous cars. Tesla is often considered the leader of the pack in that regard, as Elon Musk has staked the future of the company on bringing self-driving cars to market in the near future. The company has planned a major announcement on that subject for October 10. But the rest of the world is not sitting on its hands and allowing Tesla to zoom off into the future all alone.

According to IoT World Today, BYD has committed $14 billion to developing autonomous driving systems, even though last year a spokesman for the company said, “We think self driving tech that’s fully separated from humans is very, very far away, and basically impossible.” Today, BYD has 5,000 employees whose focus is on doing precisely that.

The latest news is that BYD will incorporate Qiankun ADS 3.0 self-driving technology from Huawei in the Fang Cheng Bao Bao 8, the second production vehicle from a new upscale BYD sub-brand intended to broaden the company’s customer base and move it into a market segment the is more profitable. There are two approaches to the automotive market. One is to start at the top and use the profits to fund development of less expensive models. Tesla, and to a lesser extent Lucid, are the prime examples of that strategy. The other approach is to start at the bottom of the market and work your way up. That is the approach used by Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, and Kia. BYD is the latest company to employ the bottom up strategy.

The Qiankun ADS 3.0 system was first introduced in April. It offers a full suite of automated functionality, including Navigate On Autopilot — broadly similar to Tesla’s Full Self Driving system — in urban areas. It features an end-to-end neural network architecture, which is said to make the automated system feel more “human-like” in the cars it is fitted to. It is also claimed to be able to autonomously navigate from parking space to parking space — negotiating complex scenarios such as roundabouts, gates, and narrow U-turns — before facilitating remote parking once a destination has been reached if the owner chooses to walk away and let the car park itself.

The reliance on automated tech from an external partner underscores that BYD is lagging a bit behind in the development of its own automated solutions and illustrates the growing influence of Huawei in the arena of driver assistance features. It was recently revealed that the next A5 and Q6 e-tron models from Audi will use Huawei ADAS in China. It is also understood that Toyota intends to use Huawei tech for one of its Chinese joint-ventures. Now that BYD has elected to use the Huawei technology, that could lead other automakers to do so as well. The appearance of Huawei tech in the BYD Fang Cheng Bao model could open the door for much more significant collaborations.

The Autonomous Revolution

The march toward cars that drive themselves is accelerating, despite a decided lack of interest by many drivers. While it may be helpful to have the car center itself on the highway and adjust the speed of the car to match surrounding traffic, there is less demand for cars that can negotiate congested city driving with pedestrians, bicyclists, delivery vans, and buses all competing for the same bits of asphalt. The truth of the matter is that self-driving cars may in fact be better at operating automobiles than human drivers, but maximizing their advantages may require removing human drivers from the mix.

In the US, highway fatalities have increased significantly in recent years, despite all the advances in driving technology recently. While the interest in self-driving tech is high among automakers, it could be argued that technology which prevents impaired and distracted driving would do more to lower traffic accidents than all the autonomous technologies that are currently attracting billions in investments.

There remains the suspicion in some circles that the whole autonomous driving push is being pursued by companies who expect to make enormous profits by selling self-driving subscriptions to drivers who want it. The long-term strategy in the industry is to de-emphasize sales and emphasize subscriptions that will continue to pour money into their coffers for years after the sale.

Tesla set the autoverse on its ear when it introduced touchscreens 14 years ago. Since then, it has spearheaded the drive to eliminate buttons and stalks. Not everyone is celebrating that trend and some carmakers are now adding back some of those buttons and controls. One can only wonder if at some point in the not to distant future, the mania for cars that can drive themselves may not enter a cooling period as well.

The Takeaway

There are two things about the BYD announcement that it is using Huawei technology that deserve mention. One, it means there will be yet another reason why its products may never reach customers in the US, where fear of Chinese technology is strong, especially where Huawei is concerned. Second, self-driving technology and electric cars go together like peanut butter and jelly. Autonomous cars will almost certainly be electric, as it makes little sense to imbue today’s gas guzzlers with such advanced driving systems. When it comes to the future of the automobile, the words of Charles Kuralt come to mind: “I see the road ahead is turning. I wonder what’s around the bend.”