BYD Vows to Cover All Costs If Its New 'God's Eye' System Crashes

BYD has thrown down the gauntlet in the autonomous driving race by tying a historic financial guarantee to its technology. At a May 28, 2026, press conference in Shenzhen, founder and Chairman Wang Chuanfu announced that the company will now offer its "God's Eye" advanced driver-assistance system for 12,000 yuan ($1,770) as a LiDAR-equipped option across all of its models . To build trust in the system, BYD made an unprecedented pledge: it will assume full financial liability for any traffic accident, covering all costs, while the system is active .

Wang framed the move around a singular, long-term ambition for the world’s largest EV maker: using self-developed intelligent-driving technology to achieve “zero traffic accidents” globally . The message was clear—BYD is not just competing on price; it is willing to bet its balance sheet on the safety of its software.

Xuanji A3: China’s First Mass-Produced 4nm Driving Chip

Supporting the new God's Eye system is BYD's freshly unveiled and mass-produced Xuanji A3, a 4-nanometer ADAS chip that BYD says is capable of L3 and L4 autonomous-driving functions . BYD claims this is China’s first mass-produced 4nm autonomous driving chip, and it targets the high-compute requirements needed for reliable "hands-off" driving, though the company has not claimed full eyes-off capability for all conditions .

To back up this rapid hardware development, Wang disclosed that BYD currently has over 7,000 people in its chip R&D division, alongside an established semiconductor business . The chip is the computational heart of a system BYD hopes will democratize autonomous driving technology.

The Accident Guarantee: A Bet on Real-World Safety

BYD is taking a direct approach to the consumer confidence problem that plagues autonomous driving. By offering to cover compensation and repairs for any accidents occurring when drivers use its urban navigate-on-autopilot function, the company is effectively serving as its own insurer. Importantly, BYD stated that this coverage would not affect a driver’s insurance premium for the following year .

A company spokesperson indicated that taking on this L3 and L4 liability early is a clear signal of BYD's confidence in its own technology . In an industry where the question of who pays when a self-driving car crashes has often been ambiguous, BYD is providing a concrete answer: BYD will pay.

A Direct Challenge to Tesla’s Price Model

Wang Chuanfu’s presentation repeatedly drew a sharp contrast with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. BYD’s strategy explicitly aims to sharply lower the price burden for autonomous driving at a time when Tesla's FSD costs $99 per month as a subscription in the U.S. .

Where Tesla has treated autonomous software as a high-margin recurring revenue stream, BYD is packaging it as an affordable, fixed-cost hardware option—bundled with a liability guarantee. The move is designed to make advanced driver-assistance a standard feature for the mass market, not a luxury add-on.

The Road to Zero Crashes

Wang backed up his “zero traffic accidents” vision with stark statistics, noting that roughly 1.19 million people die in road traffic crashes globally each year . BYD’s stated mission is to assemble next-generation cars affordable enough for mass consumers to drastically reduce that number.

The broader push combines three key elements unveiled at the Shenzhen event: a competitively priced LiDAR-equipped driving system, the new Xuanji A3 chip in mass production, and the crash-cost pledge . Whether BYD can deliver on such an ambitious safety record remains to be tested on public roads, but the company has now raised the stakes for every other automaker in the autonomous driving transition.