2019 Byton M-Byte

The car’s name is a riff on the computer data term for a reason.

- Kim Reynolds

The Byton isn’t just another 0–60 electric railgun. While the 680-hp Tesla Model SP100D, 1,000-hp Lucid Air, and the 754-hp Rivian R1T will all bazooka onto on-ramps, the Byton’s standard configuration—with a modest 272 hp rear motor and 71-kW-hr battery (250-mile range)—will be merely “quick.”

Its “fast” version adds a front 204-hp motor that’s just a shortened (cheaper) version of a rear one, and it can travel a Tesla-like 325 miles on its 95-kW-hr battery pack. But even then, its combined 476 hp won’t raise one eyebrow among performance wonks.

Although Tesla has sometimes crowed in its quarterly reports about Motor Trend’s blistering Model S 0–60 times, Byton president Daniel Kirchert tepidly defended his car’s performance, saying it’s “not a lame duck.”

Underwhelming? It’s intentional, one leg of a three-legged stool of foundational design bets, each totally dependent on the other two. Think about it: If a car is geofenced Level 3 autonomous, everyone inside is also usually a passenger, meaning the drivetrain really needs no more than chauffeur level performance. All that supercar-level horsepower is a waste of money better spent on the user’s digital experience and autonomy tech.