(Bloomberg) — BYD Co. opened a new front in China’s electric vehicle price war — adding advanced driver-assistance features across most of its lineup for no extra cost and sending its shares to a record.
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At a highly anticipated event on Monday evening in Shenzhen, BYD said it will make its God’s Eye driver-assistance system standard in vehicles priced from 100,000 yuan ($13,700) and include it in several lower-cost models such as the popular Seagull hatchback.
While assisted driving is one of the core battlegrounds for automakers in China, vehicles with similar features from rivals typically sell for more than 150,000 yuan and some manufacturers charge additional fees to have the tech enabled. Tesla Inc., which is waiting for approval from Beijing to roll out trials of features it markets as Full Self-Driving, but which require constant supervision, charges $99 a month in the US.
“This is basically a non-price-cut price cut disguised as a smart-feature update on almost all BYD branded vehicles,” independent China autos analyst Lei Xing said.
BYD shares jumped 4.5% to a record high at the start of Hong Kong trading Tuesday, lifting its market value to $132 billion — more than Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Stellantis NV combined. The gain built on a 21% rally last week in anticipation of Monday’s event.
The move to democratize advanced driving features could help BYD — which sold more than 4 million vehicles last year — widen the gap over Tesla and domestic rivals such as Xpeng Inc. and smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp., which haven’t been able to make such technology available on lower-cost vehicles.
This year “will be the first for intelligent driving for everybody,” BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu said at Monday’s event at the company’s headquarters. “It will become a must-have in the next two to three years, just as a seatbelt or an airbag.”
BYD also plans to integrate software from DeepSeek, the Chinese startup that stunned global markets last month with its open-source AI model, it said Monday, without specifying when that would happen. The company also claimed it has obtained China’s first Level 3 assisted driving testing license.
BYD’s announcement was largely welcomed by analysts, who said it will give the company an advantage over rivals like Tesla.
