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In my article yesterday about BYD including its advanced driver-assist tech in all of its models, I made some claims that were perhaps not very well informed or accurate. I wrote, “However, some headlines are claiming this is Tesla-like tech and that this is going to make all of BYD’s cars self-driving capable. As far as I understand it, this is not close to Tesla’s ‘Full Self Driving’ (FSD) tech.” That’s because while Tesla’s system is certainly not without issue, it will drive you from Point A to Point B on all sorts of different roads, and the “God’s Eye C” tech that will be in the Seagull and some other cheap models isn’t able to do that. I also wrote, “With a fleet of millions upon millions of Chinese EVs driving around with key technology in them, could DeepSeek do whatever Tesla is going to be able to do with FSD? Maybe.”
Well, a couple of comments from readers put me in my place, and quite politely I might add. Larry Evans offered the following:
BYD’s God’s Eye C, offered on vehicles that are a fraction of the cost of a Tesla, is technically SAE Level 2+ ADAS. “FSD Supervised” is also technically SAE Level 2 ADAS. It still needs human supervision (as the name suggests).
BYD’s God’s Eye C averages over 1000 km of autonomous driving between human interventions. That is already better than what Tesla claims, despite all the hype. BYD’s low-end system can also valet park without a driver.
The sensors used are more extensive, even on the base “C” system with “12 cameras, 5 mm-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic radars. Those 12 cameras consist of 3 front-view cameras, 5 panoramic cameras, and 4 surround-view cameras. Five mm-wave radars provide 360-degree non-dead angle perception, the front radar has a detection distance of 300 meters. The accuracy of the 12 ultrasonic radar sensors is 1 cm, and the parking accuracy is 2 cm.”
God’s Eye B is Level 3 for highway (adds LiDAR). It has been conducting on-road testing for over a year. It has driven across China in testing on a Denza with no human intervention. This system is included on vehicles priced in line with Tesla.
God’s Eye A (3 LiDAR) is level 3 highway and city and is included on the top-level vehicles. With regulatory approval, most discussion is that the system could offer Level 4.
Despite all the hype, Tesla does not currently offer Level 3. And it will be very difficult to implement even the current Level 2 “FSD Supervised” system in China because of its heavy reliance on central coding of images (which runs into information privacy laws) to try to overcome a lack of sensors.
Tesla is not offering what the headlines are claiming, just making promises that they will in the future.
So, well, it seems I was mistaken and incorrect. I’m sure not everyone will answer the same if given the choice between a Tesla with FSD and a BYD with God’s Eye A or B, but level 3 capability in the city and on the highway with the likelihood of level 4 coming? That sounds like it wins. Meanwhile, God’s Eye C seems to include the same type of phone-controlled parking as Tesla’s “Actually Smart Summon (ASS)” and may actually have better self-driving reliability than FSD on the highway (that’s not totally clear and I don’t think it can be clarified with publicly available information). God’s Eye B does appear to be a safer and more capable system for highway driving, and it does also offer such self-driving in the city (see below) — so, this seems more or less comparable to Tesla FSD.
What’s perhaps particularly notable is that BYD was able to figure out how to have lidar and radar play nicely with cameras for maximum safety. Tesla claimed it was better off never using lidar and ditching radar. But it appears that, for the time being at least, BYD is able to accomplish more with lidar and radar involved (level 3 is better than level 2). It’s also easy to understand how integrating lidar, radar, and cameras would end up with better performance if you’re able to train them well to use the best sensors for the situation. Again, it appears that BYD (like Waymo) has been able to do that.
On that point, commenter Mathew2312 responded to Larry Evans in full support and highlighting some of these matters himself. He wrote:
I was coming to post the same. The top tier system already surpasses the Tesla system (see last paragraph). The main thing to note is that the value of FSD in the Tesla share price is basically zero which means Tesla should be trading at $60 or so. Some additional info:
“Other hardware elements of the ‘God’s Eye C’ include 12 cameras, 5 mm-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic radars. Those 12 cameras consist of 3 front-view cameras, 5 panoramic cameras, and 4 surround-view cameras. Five mm-wave radars provide 360-degree non-dead angle perception, the front radar has a detection distance of 300 meters. The accuracy of the 12 ultrasonic radar sensors is 1 cm, and the parking accuracy is 2 cm”
“The top-tier BYD’s autopilot system is called ‘God’s Eye A’. It adopts three LiDARs powered by the DiPilot 600 system with the computing power of 600 TOPS. This system will power vehicles under BYD’s luxury brand Yangwang.”
“Wang Chuanfu announced that all BYD models will be equipped with ‘God’s Eye’ intelligent driving system, including BYD Seagull, BYD Qin Plus DM-i, and BYD Seal 05 DM-i models with a price tag below 100,000 yuan (13,690 USD). Every BYD car with the new driving assistance system will have Xuanji architecture with ‘one brain, two ends, three networks, and four chains’. It means each car has a central processor, cloud AI, vehicle-side AI, Internet of Vehicles, 5G network, satellite network, sensors chain, control chain, data chain, and mechanical chain.
“The ‘God’s Eye A’ and ‘God’s Eye B’ systems support the NOA (Navigation on Autopilot) function in cities and highways. The ‘God’s Eye C’ system currently supports only high-speed NOA. However, the entry-level system is expected to support the city NOA function in the long term via OTA update.”
“As icing on the cake, the BYD Chairman showed a video of the Yangwang U9 supercar equipped with the God’s Eye A system driving on a racing track while being unmanned.”
It’s not clear to me if God’s Eye B is definitely better or worse than Tesla FSD, but there seems to be a solid chance it’s better and it’s at least comparable. Also, it does look like they’re even aiming to get God’s Eye C there! That’s crazy.
So, it looks like I need to eat my words. It seems that this statement is wrong: “As far as I understand it, this is not close to Tesla’s ‘Full Self Driving’ (FSD) tech.” Apologies!
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