After dominating China's first wave of electric vehicle (EV) adoption, BYD is shifting its focus in 2025 from electrification to intelligent mobility. The automaker has launched what it calls a campaign for "smart driving for everyone," aiming to make autonomous driving technologies accessible to mass-market consumers.
Yet the effort has proved more challenging than expected. Facing lukewarm consumer response and tightening government scrutiny, BYD has been forced to reignite a price war in October, offering limited-time discounts and lower-cost trims to defend its market share.
From premium tech to mass market
Under its new initiative, BYD began equipping its budget models—priced around CNY100,000 (approx. US$14,086)—with advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) previously reserved for cars in the CNY200,000 range. The company sought to redefine smart mobility as a standard feature rather than a luxury add-on, directly challenging the higher-end approaches of Tesla and Huawei.
However, the rollout faltered. After a high-profile crash involving a Xiaomi EV, Chinese regulators tightened restrictions on how automakers could market "intelligent driving" functions, warning against overstated claims of autonomy. The resulting chill in advertising dampened public enthusiasm just as BYD was promoting its new features.
A pragmatic market pushes back
Another hurdle lies in BYD's core customer base. The company's buyers tend to be value-driven drivers, prioritizing affordability and practicality over cutting-edge tech. Industry data show that even at the height of China's smart-driving adoption wave, take-up rates for BYD's autonomous systems fell below expectations.
Many consumers opted for downgraded configurations, choosing to save roughly CNY9,000 rather than pay extra for driver-assistance packages, underscoring the fierce competition in China's CNY100,000 price bracket, the true battleground of the domestic car market.
A tactical retreat to price competitiveness
In response to weaker September sales, BYD swiftly recalibrated its strategy in October, returning to a cost-driven playbook. Through limited-time discounts and simplified base models, the automaker refocused attention on price-to-performance rather than advanced driving tech.
Entry-level versions of the Qin L and Song Pro dropped BYD's "God's Eye C" driver-assistance suite and even removed automatic emergency braking (AEB) to achieve price cuts ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan. The move symbolized a shift from "intelligent driving as standard" back to "intelligent driving as optional."
Building data depth, not just selling cars
Still, BYD's retreat is tactical, not total. The company continues to invest heavily in data infrastructure. As of September 2025, its "God's Eye" intelligent-driving platform had been deployed in 1.7 million vehicles, generating more than 110 million kilometers of daily driving data, a massive dataset it hopes will narrow the algorithmic gap with Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) and Huawei's ADS systems.
While BYD's software maturity still trails foreign competitors, its mass-market, low-cost strategy for smart driving may ultimately reshape the industry's assumptions—challenging the notion that advanced autonomous features must remain the privilege of premium buyers.
Article edited by Jack Wu
