Why China's auto giants threaten Tesla's FSD

Its self-driving tech costs 20%-40% less

- NORIHIKO SHIROUZU

Chinese electric-vehicle makers led by BYD beat Tesla in the competition to produce affordable electric vehicles. Now, many of those same fierce competitors are pulling into the passing lane in the global race to produce self-driving cars.

BYD shook up China's smart-EV industry earlier this year by offering its "God's eye" driver-assistance package for free, undercutting the technology Tesla sells for nearly $9,000 (about 294,000 baht) in China.

"With God's eye, Tesla's strategy starts to fall apart," said Shenzhen-based BYD investor Taylor Ogan, an American who has owned several Teslas and driven BYD cars with God's eye, which he called more capable than Tesla's "full self-driving" (FSD).

It's not just BYD. Other Chinese auto and tech companies are offering affordable EVs with FSD-like technology for less money. China's Leapmotor and Xpeng, for instance, offer systems capable of highway and urban driving in $20,000 vehicles. A slew of Chinese firms is chasing the same technology, an industry push backed by China's government.

BYD's assisted-driving hardware costs far less than Tesla's, according to analyses performed for Reuters by companies that dismantle and analyse vehicles for automakers. The comparisons, which have not been previously reported, show that BYD's costs to procure components and build a system with radar and lidar are about the same as Tesla's FSD, which doesn't have such sensors. That undercuts Tesla's unusual technological approach, which aims to save costs by nixing such sensors and relying solely on cameras and artificial intelligence.