审视比亚迪的‘智能驾驶全面攻势’

Examining BYD’s“Smart Driving for AllOffensive” Insights on Car PurchaseDesicion – Smart Driving (2025) TengYi Research Institute Authors Lijun Zhou Director/Chief Analystzhoulijun1@yiche.com Ying Gao Industry Analystgaoying1@yiche.com Industry Analystshibenya@yiche.com Desire for smart driving: buyer preference on vehicle’s abilityto achieve safer, more convenient and more comfortable drivingthrough hardware/software such as high-def sensor, algorithmand compute As of early 2025, the controversy surrounding the concept of smart driving remained significant. Somepeople believe that the term “smart driving” is simply a marketing gimmick because “smart” couldmean a lot more than just technology and is a loose term that lacks rigor. From a technology perspective,smart driving mainly covers specific functions such as assisted driving and HMI. These functions havebeen somewhat popularized in the past, so the concept of smart driving is really something that’s notdisruptive, but rather optimized and integrated. There is more diversion in terms of technology roadmap:where some may prefer the use of LiDARs and emphasize complex road conditions in China and othersmay prefer a vision-only approach and emphasize practicality when it comes to sensor suites. Similardiversion exists in terms of vehicle planning and control; While debate continues in terms of technology maturation and choosing one roadmap over another, whatmatters at the end of the day is the improvement in user experience in areas such as safety and comfort.TengYi Research Institute primarily conducts consumer research and does not have the wherewithal todebate about the right or wrong technology roadmap nor are we qualified to critique technology matura-tion. Therefore, we will focus on defining smart driving in terms of three key words associated with userexperience: safety, comfort and convenience. Though “smart driving” has become somewhat of amodifier, but it has inadvertently become an influential term online. To better communicate with ourreaders, we will also use the term “smart driving” but for the purpose of this report it specifically refers toassisted driving (including high levels of assisted driving). After balancing pros and cons, we define desirefor smart driving as buyer preference on vehicle’s ability to achieve safer, more convenient and morecomfortable driving through hardware/software means such as high-definition sensors, algorithms andcompute; This report is mainly based on online research from TYRI with more than 70,000 data samples in 2024and references TengYi Big Data and TYRI offline research data. Desire for Smart Driving Schematic The “smart driving for all offensive” from BYD came out ofnowhere in early 2025 and caught competitors off-guard as“smart driving consumption boom” quickly takes industry bystorm China’s “smart driving consumption boom” intensified over the past 5-6 years after Tesla began localproduction in 2020, which rapidly ignited Chinese consumers’passion for smart driving. The emergenceof new industry players such as Huawei, Xpeng, NIO and Li Auto further accelerated that boom. From2020 to 2024, the desire for smart driving from Chinese car buyers rose from less than 10% to nearly 40%as the Chinese car market quickly became the biggest fertile ground in the world for the popularization ofsmart driving. Carmakers that put lots of efforts into smart driving then expected the period 2025-2026 tobe a golden harvesting season because of the “smart driving consumption boom,” yet all of a suddenhave to deal with BYD’s “smart driving for all offensive” announced in early 2025; Prior to 2025, the rapid emergence of the “smart driving consumption boom” and the meteoric rise ofBYD in China never intersected. BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu had emphasized back in 2018 that thefirst half of competition for BYD was electrification, and the second half would be smartification. Over thepast few years, smartification-focused carmakers such as those with Huawei inside never took BYD as aserious competitor. But that changed on February 10, 2025, when smart driving became a new label forBYD as it announced a surprising “smart driving for all offensive” that included smart driving editions for21 models under its namesake brand, including the sub-RMB80,000 Seagull smart driving edition. “Rightnow, cars that are equipped with smart driving features often cost more than RMB200,000, synonymouswith high prices. In 2024 about 70% of the cars sold in China were priced below RMB200,000, so amajority of buyers do not have the opportunity to experience smart driving, as only 10% of the cars sold inthe year had high levels of smart driving,” said Wang. “High upfront cost is the biggest barrier to thepopularization of smart driving. Good technology should be available to all, therefore BYD wants to offersmart driving to all.” Carmakers like Tesla, Huawei ecosystem players and Li Auto have methodically pushed forward theirsmart dri