Unveiling BYD's Intelligent Driving Popularization Campaign: A Long-Planned "Open Strategy"

Written by Li Anqi

Edited by Li Qin

BYD's intelligent driving popularization campaign has made its peers feel uneasy.

On the evening of February 10, after BYD released 21 high-level intelligent driving vehicles in one go, it quickly provoked a "counterattack" from its peers.

Although not explicitly targeted, a senior executive of Great Wall Motors said on a social platform, "Intelligent driving is not a show; practice leads to true knowledge." Yu Chengdong, the chairman of Huawei's Vehicle Business Unit, shouted, "There is a completely different realm between being usable and being good and safe in intelligent driving."

In BYD's intelligent driving popularization strategy, from the Seagull priced at 78,800 yuan to the Song L EV priced at 249,800 yuan, the first batch of 21 new vehicles are equipped with high-level intelligent driving capabilities, and the configuration is upgraded without a price increase. At the same time, BYD's brands, including Denza, Fangchengbao, and Yangwang, will also be equipped with high-level intelligent driving functions.

According to a preliminary statistics, only the entry-level models of the three vehicles, the Seagull, Qin/Seal 05 DM-i, are not equipped with high-level intelligent driving. In other words, the configuration ratio of BYD's high-level intelligent driving is almost 90%.‍‍‍

If based on the industry's forecast of BYD's sales of approximately 5.5 million vehicles this year, the company is expected to sell nearly 5 million intelligent driving vehicles. This is an unprecedented popularization effort of high-level intelligent driving in the industry. "In the future, vehicles without intelligent driving will become the minority," BYD's head Wang Chuanfu said at the press conference.

Moreover, BYD does not adopt an intelligent driving strategy of simply being low-priced. Its entry-level intelligent driving system, "Heavenly Eye C," is equipped with Nvidia Orin N and Horizon J6M chips, retaining a higher functional upper limit.

In other words, the current basic intelligent driving function of BYD's "Heavenly Eye C" is pilot driving on highways and expressways, but the hardware can support its upgrade to urban pilot driving and even "driving throughout the country," which is on par with the "high-level intelligent driving" that the industry is currently competing for.

Peers have felt an overwhelming pressure.

Changan Automobile, before BYD's press conference, announced that it would lower the laser radar to 100,000-yuan-level models in August this year; Geely is also brewing an intelligentization announcement, intending to popularize high-level intelligent driving functions in the 100,000-yuan-level market.

New energy vehicle companies also feel a sense of being caught up. An informed person told 36Kr Auto that the new vehicle intelligent driving platform of Li Auto originally only had functions such as high-speed and expressway pilot driving and memory pilot driving. Now, it is accelerating the addition of urban NOA functions from suppliers. "If the original functions are maintained, there will be no gap with BYD."

In the electric vehicle arena, BYD's "same price for gasoline and electric vehicles" and "79,800 yuan" killer moves have caused a massacre. In the second half of intelligence, BYD has also given a countdown warning.

This Year of BYD's Intelligent Driving

In the opinion of many employees and industry insiders, BYD's attitude towards intelligent driving has obviously changed since last year.

First of all, the intelligent driving team has experienced many "races". At the beginning of last year, BYD integrated the intelligent driving and intelligent networking teams to establish a new technology institute. In the middle of the year, the intelligent driving department of BYD's New Technology Institute split into two development departments, Tianxuan and Tianlang, which respectively led the self-developed high-level intelligent driving solution and the low-level intelligent driving and supplier solution management.

In October, BYD's two intelligent driving teams merged again. During this period, the position of BYD's intelligent driving director underwent three changes, from the veteran Han Bing and the newcomer Xu Lingyun to the current leader Li Feng, who reports to Yang Dongsheng, the dean of the New Technology Institute.

An industry insider told 36Kr that Li Feng won because he had been working on intelligent driving in BYD's Electronic Business Division, with rich mass production experience and some R & D experience in high-speed and urban NOA (pilot assistance).

After the team stabilized, BYD entered the rapid march stage of self-developed projects. According to 36Kr Auto, BYD's self-developed intelligent driving project started in September last year, including high-speed NOA, urban NOA, etc.

In mid-December last year, BYD's intelligent driving employees in Shanghai suddenly received a notice requiring them to go to Shenzhen for centralized and closed development. "In order to support Shanghai employees to go to Shenzhen, BYD also specially approved a travel allowance, and they don't have to catch the cheapest early morning flight," an employee said.

Li Feng, the head of BYD's intelligent driving, also issued a notice at the beginning of December last year: Project A (self-developed intelligent driving) has come a long way, and the last step is to ensure the mass production and delivery of our software with quality and quantity guaranteed by February 5.

A BYD employee told 36Kr Auto that Li Feng himself is also very hardworking. Sometimes at five or six in the morning, he will still push engineers in the work group to fix bugs.

According to 36Kr, BYD's emphasis on the intelligent driving strategy is top-down. On the one hand, BYD's head Wang Chuanfu perceives that intelligent driving is a rigid demand with great potential; on the other hand, users' demands are becoming more and more obvious, and the sales team also hopes to develop intelligent driving as soon as possible.

In the rapid adjustment, BYD has gradually clarified the popularization direction of intelligent driving.

From 0 to 1, the Snowball of Intelligent Driving Rolls Up

BYD's intelligent driving system is divided into three major platforms: A, B, and C.

Among them, the A platform is equipped with two OrinX chips with a computing power of 508TOPS and three laser radars. It is positioned as ultra-high-end and is mainly equipped in the Yangwang brand; the B platform is equipped with one OrinX chip with a computing power of 254TOPS and one or two laser radars. It is mainly equipped in the Denza and BYD brands. Both the A and B platforms can achieve urban pilot functions, but they also rely on suppliers.

The C platform is the entry-level version without laser radar, mainly equipped in the BYD brand. At this stage, it can achieve functions such as high-speed and urban expressway pilot driving and automatic parking. BYD said that it can achieve the urban memory pilot function by the end of the year.

The C platform has the largest scale of BYD's intelligent driving and is also the current key platform for self-research. According to 36Kr Auto, initially, BYD's self-developed intelligent driving solution also considered the Horizon J3/J5 platform with lower computing power, but in the end, it used the Nvidia Orin N platform and Horizon J6M. The AI computing power of the two chips is 84TOPS and 128TOPS respectively.

In fact, based on the Horizon J3/J5 and other platforms, vehicle companies can also achieve functions such as high-speed NOA. However, in the stage where intelligent driving is increasingly approaching AI, BYD wants to retain a larger space for technological evolution.

In terms of computing power, the computing power of J3 is only 5 TOPS, which is not large enough, and the support of J5 for large model technical architectures such as transformers is not sufficient. Therefore, BYD finally chose the Nvidia Orin N and Horizon J6M chips with better performance.

On these two platforms, BYD will have great hopes of expanding to scenarios such as full-scenario intelligent driving and driving throughout the country in the future.

In the "end-to-end" frontier field that new energy vehicle companies are attacking, BYD also continues to adopt a "two-line advance" strategy internally. According to 36Kr's understanding from informed sources, there are two teams within BYD, respectively responsible for one-stage end-to-end research and development and two-stage end-to-end mass production.

Wang Chuanfu said at the press conference that BYD's intelligent driving has reached a new daily training mileage of 72 million kilometers in 2024. Every 7 days, a cloud version can be trained and OTA updated to the user's vehicle to continuously improve the intelligent driving function of the "Heavenly Eye C".

Under the strategic determination of intelligent driving equality, the continuously adjusted R & D system and engineering breakthroughs, BYD's "intelligent driving for all" is ready to go.

The Equation of Intelligent Driving Popularization: 5 Million Vehicles Multiplied by Everything

Last year, the mainstream narrative in the intelligent driving industry was mainly the technical competitions such as end-to-end and AI large models, which basically existed among suppliers such as Huawei, NIO, Xpeng, Li Auto, including Momenta, Horizon, and DeepRoute.

However, BYD may bring a new intelligent driving popularization narrative with its possible ultra-large scale.

The first batch of 21 BYD intelligent driving vehicles listed basically maintained their original price positioning. For example, the Seagull priced at 78,800 yuan is also equipped with functions such as high-speed and expressway pilot driving. This is even more aggressive than the intelligent configuration of models such as Xiaopeng MONA M03.

This is strongly related to BYD's ultra-large-scale effect. According to 36Kr Auto's understanding, the software and hardware solution cost of the Heavenly Eye C platform is within 5,000 yuan, including intelligent driving domain controllers, cameras, millimeter-wave radars and other sensors. However, the solution cost of the industry's intelligent driving suppliers may be at the 6,000 - 7,000 level, which is much higher than BYD's solution.

And the possible scale of more than 5 million vehicles has also become a cost negotiation tool for BYD in core hardware such as AI chips and laser radars. For example, in terms of chips, according to 36Kr Auto's understanding, BYD has placed orders of millions of chips for Nvidia and Horizon respectively; similarly, RoboSense and Hesai Technology are both major laser radar suppliers of BYD, and both have received orders for more than 10 vehicle models.

With BYD's procurement volume, whether it is a laser radar or an intelligent driving chip, it is easy to achieve a balance in price by selecting two suppliers.

And BYD's accumulated vertical integration capability for many years has also made many contributions to cost reduction. In terms of intelligent driving hardware such as domain controllers, cameras, and ultrasonic radars, BYD Electronics, as a subsidiary of BYD, undertakes the supply of most intelligent driving components for the parent company.

But BYD's vertical integration of hardware is not limited to this. Previously, according to the news at the supplier conference at the beginning of 2024, BYD is also developing medium and low-wire harness laser radars. Wang Chuanfu said at that time that the price of low-wire harness laser radars is less than 1,000 yuan.

If BYD's self-developed tentacles also extend to the field of laser radars, its cost advantage and profit gain will be more obvious.

BYD's intelligent driving popularization campaign seems like a thunderbolt strike, but in fact, it has been planned for a long time. Behind it is a clear strategic will, a resolute execution ability, and an irreplaceable industrial appeal. Therefore, although it is an open strategy, it still catches the industry off guard. And this is also the root of BYD's competitiveness.