BYD Ready To Disburse IDR 200 Trillion Funds For Smart Car Technology Development

Byd YangWang U9. (Doc. BYD Global)

JAKARTA - The development of autonomous driving technology is massive with several manufacturers offering this system. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, GM, Hyundai, and Tesla have been studying this system for a long time and have been present in some of its advanced vehicles.

BYD is one of the manufacturers who wish to develop a semi-autonomous driving system feature in their smart cars. The largest brand from China will invest 100 billion yuan or IDR 219.6 trillion to make it happen.

Reporting from Bloomberg quoted by Carscoops, Wednesday, January 17, this system requires drivers to touch the wheel every 15 seconds and will be installed on a model at a price of 300,000 yuan or around Rp. 658.8 million.

The company says this advanced feature will come across various BYD models as an optional package for the affordable version of the model. It said the system had been installed on the N7 Denza and would soon add to the ranks of models with the YangWang sub brand.

A number of other interesting technologies are being developed by these car manufacturers, such as drones with their own housing cases, where the steering wheel has also been designed to be able to escape the steering wheel and be used to play games on the YangWang U8 model. In addition, BYD is also trying to add palm motion sensor technology that allows drivers to open car doors by waving.

Late last December, BYD also had a permit in Shenzhen City to test vehicles with Level 3 (L3) autonomous driving systems on highways and toll roads. By obtaining China's first L3 autonomous driving license, highlighting the intelligent expression capabilities of BYD, and is a reflection of the technology being developed.

Apart from BYD, there are also companies like Xpeng that are at the forefront of the driver assistance system and offer a pilot navigation guide system for 52 cities across the country. The system relies on vehicle lidar sensors and cameras and is capable of handling acceleration, braking, switching lanes, and even detecting traffic lights.