In just one night, BYD has brought Advanced Driving System down from their pedestal! What was once a feature for cars priced at 300,000 RMB, BYD now claims that even cars at the 100,000 RMB price range can have it. The era of universal intelligent driving has officially arrived.

Even the 7,000 RMB Seagull comes equipped with Advanced Driving System, sparking intense discussions in the market and making this top-tier feature of intelligent vehicles more accessible to the masses. In fact, before BYD, multinational carmaker Toyota had already fully implemented driver assistance systems in the Chinese market.

Leading the Chinese auto market into the era of intelligent driving, BYD has finally become Toyota!

BYD’s "God’s Eye" A, B, and C driver assistance systems are adapted to different levels of models, bringing features like adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping, and shift-based lane changes to even the 7,000 RMB Seagull, an A0-class model.

While intelligent driving was just a promotional gimmick for new carmakers in the past five years, Toyota’s T-Pilot technology had already been widely applied in entry-level models like the Corolla and Levin, making Toyota the first to popularize driver safety tech in the Chinese market. Yet, this breakthrough rarely gets the recognition it deserves.

Unlike BYD, Toyota’s annual production volume in China has dropped to less than 2 million units, and its main models are primarily priced in the 200,000 RMB range. Moreover, Toyota markets driver assistance tech primarily as a safety feature, rather than raising expectations about the car’s driving capabilities.

With plans to reach an annual production volume of 5 million units, BYD’s widespread adoption of driver assistance systems is driven by its massive scale, which lowers costs, and is a necessary step for further development, especially in the highly competitive electric vehicle market.

For Toyota, intelligent driving is just another feature of the car. Even if it’s rolled out across the entire lineup, it’s not a major driver of sales growth. Toyota, constrained by market prejudice against joint ventures, has opted for a low-key approach to survive.

With BYD now the global leader in new energy vehicles and the top automaker in China, it must carefully navigate its future development. However, it has become the target of competition, with companies like Geely, Chery, and Great Wall eager to catch up.

BYD’s achievements in the new energy vehicle sector are unprecedented. It can no longer rely on “Honor” and “Champion” editions at low prices to boost sales. Advanced Driving System have become the key to driving sales and improving development quality.

When BYD makes intelligent driving features available across the board, from the high-end 1-million RMB models to the 7,000 RMB Seagull, and brings over 400 million units of vehicles to the intelligent driving ecosystem, BYD has achieved what Toyota has done and has failed to do.

Of course, during BYD’s widespread adoption of intelligent driving, different models equipped with the Heavenly Eye have varying functions and performance. However, what remains the same is the focus on driving safety, not the flashy “autonomous driving” claims of some new carmakers.

This aligns perfectly with Toyota! It’s worth noting that Toyota’s T-Pilot system, both past and present, is part of Toyota Safety Sense (TSS), which is a “collision avoidance assistance kit” rather than truly intelligent driving, let alone autonomous driving.

Before L3-level autonomous driving is fully realized, the right path for automakers and the market is to focus on safety and promote high-level driver assistance systems. This is the line that both the world’s number one automaker, Toyota, and China’s number one, BYD, are sticking to.

Tesla’s long-standing promotion of “FSD” (Full Self-Driving) is still only available globally as an extra “Enhanced Autopilot” feature, which essentially consists of L2-level adaptive cruise control, automatic parking, and smart summon, all of which still require the driver to maintain control in complex road conditions.

However, the misuse of intelligent driving features by users and the resulting safety risks and accidents are alarming. Some new carmakers' exaggerated advertising and careless use of terminology are part of the problem.

Whether it’s hybrid technology or advanced driver assistance, the popularization of these new technologies is due to the efforts of Toyota and BYD, not just because of their massive market share but because they’ve steered the direction of the industry.

Toyota’s hybrid technology has kept it as the global sales leader, while BYD has become the number one in China, leveraging both plug-in hybrid and pure electric markets to help China’s automotive industry leapfrog. Soon, we’ll see Chinese automakers enter the world’s top five.

While BYD pursues the goal of universal intelligent driving, Toyota has also begun increasing its investment in LiDAR and advanced driver assistance technologies. The first models to feature this are GAC Toyota’s bZ3X and FAW Toyota’s bZ3C. Meanwhile, the Lexus RX and Toyota Sienna L3 autonomous driving vehicles are already operating in cities like Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. As autonomous driving regulations are put in place, we can expect these features to soon be available to all users.

When Toyota and BYD join forces, the widespread adoption of high-level driver assistance systems will truly become a global market trend. Before that, the two companies have already worked together to make hybrid cars a global phenomenon.

Whether it’s the popularization of hybrid cars or intelligent driving technology, BYD has seemingly become Toyota overnight.

BYD is aggressively expanding into the global market, with Toyota as its benchmark. Toyota, in turn, is learning from BYD’s success in China, the world’s fastest-growing market, to accelerate its own development.

In the hybrid car market, Toyota plans to launch the next generation of plug-in hybrid cars in 2027, featuring super hybrid engines and new high-performance batteries. The biggest credit goes to BYD’s development achievements, which have set an example for the industry.

Of course, business is business! Whether it’s Toyota’s global market or BYD’s Chinese market, the two companies will eventually face off. This is not a life-or-death battle but an intense competition to satisfy global users’ desires for better automotive experiences.