BYD last year announced God's Eye would not only go into its premium vehicles, but become a standard feature across its lineup - even for cheap hatchbacks. The move was designed to cement BYD's dominance in the world's largest auto market by offering advanced tech that its rivals charge a premium for but at no extra cost.
While Wang's company has successfully ramped up electric vehicle sales at a pace unmatched by peers, the world's top-selling EV maker's performance in the realm of cutting-edge driving remains a work in progress.
Popular Chinese social media sites like Xiaohongshu are filled with posts from anonymous users complaining about steering flaws, navigational screen malfunctions and delays in features such as memory navigation in urban roads with its mass market models.
BYD's Yangwang team has resolved Zhou's case, the company said in a statement. "Yangwang consistently values user feedback and remains committed to providing better products and services," it said.
The growing pains are hardly unique to BYD. In the US, Tesla Inc. is facing a widening investigation into the partially automated driving system marketed as "Full-Self Driving," following a number of deadly accidents. Ford Motor Co.'s BlueCruise driver-assistance feature also is being probed by US auto safety regulators after a pair of fatal crashes involving the technology.
The perceived prevalence of God's Eye glitches could also just be a matter of scale. While systems like Tesla's assisted driving on city roads are optional upgrades, God's Eye is standard across BYD's vast number of models, potentially making the technical hurdles inherent to semi-autonomous driving more visible and widespread.
Yet the problems belie BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu's prediction that the advanced driver-assistance feature would become "a must-have in the next two to three years, just as a seatbelt or an airbag."
Execution Gap
The system's problems range from failing to yield to other vehicles to missing automated toll gates and highway off-ramps, according to SBD Automotive's analysis.
"Putting advanced ADAS hardware across virtually its entire lineup at no cost is a scale that Western OEMs simply haven't matched," said Varun Murthy, a senior manager and ADAS Principal at SBD, a global automotive research and consulting firm. "But there's a real gap between the hardware promise and the software execution."
Compounding the issue, BYD's software isn't standardized across its lineup. Its most affordable cars are equipped with a pared-back version of God's Eye called Tier C, with vision-based solutions only. Mid-range vehicles get the more robust Tier B, and BYD's top-of-the-line luxury models are outfitted with its most advanced Tier A software that includes three Lidar sensors.
BYD currently only offers the complete kit of God's Eye in its home market, whereas General Motors Co.'s Super Cruise tech is available in the US, China, South Korea and Canada. Ford's BlueCruise is offered in the US, Canada and more than a dozen European nations.
Tesla is seeking approval from Chinese regulators to roll out its advanced driver-assistance capabilities in the country and expects to get approval as soon as this year. However, the functions won't be marketed under the name of Full Self-Driving in China, where regulators are tightening supervision of the marketing of driver-assistance functions.
As of late 2025, more than 2.5 million BYD vehicles sold in China were equipped with God's Eye, according to company data, which is more than double Tesla's 1.1 million FSD users globally. Even so, the deployment scale can hardly be conflated with system maturity. "Those are two very different things," said Murthy.
Some industry watchers also believe BYD's system trails Tesla when it comes to collecting data used for fine-tuning, for example by recording unusual scenarios such as unexpected pedestrian behavior that helps train its software to avoid collisions.
"The God's Eye system is impressive, but at best, we think BYD's platform generates less than half as much data as Tesla's FSD," Piper Sandler analysts, who have a neutral rating on BYD's stock, wrote in December.
The Shenzhen-based titan is expected to launch updates of its ADAS software in the coming months, and meanwhile is redoubling efforts to stay ahead of other EV makers with innovations in hardware such as batteries and charging infrastructure. Earlier this month, it unveiled its latest generation of so-called more powerful "blade batteries" and ultra-fast flash chargers.
That could be a bigger pull for buyers, especially those making their first switch from a gasoline-powered car to an EV - where range anxiety is a key issue.
"Several factors consistently shape the user experience in smart EVs, and addressing range anxiety has always been one of the most fundamental," said Chris Liu, a Shanghai-based senior analyst at research agency Omdia. The typical BYD buyer remains far more fixated on charging availability and range than the nuances of self-driving, Liu said.
"BYD's core customer base is still more concerned about charging convenience than advanced autonomy," he said.