On May 28, at the ‘Bold Innovation’ intelligent technology strategy launch event, BYD President Wang Chuanfu officially unveiled the company’s self-developed intelligent driving chip ‘Xuanji A3’. Positioned as China’s first dedicated smart-driving chip built on a 4nm process, it has now entered mass production. According to Wang, when three such chips are deployed together, their combined computing power exceeds 2100 TOPS, enabling L3 and L4 levels of autonomous driving. Following extensive optimization using BYD’s proprietary algorithms, the actual utilization rate of this computing power has doubled compared to the unoptimized state.
Wang also revealed during the event that BYD established its own IC design division as early as 2002—the precursor to BYD Semiconductor—and has since released over 2000 distinct chip products across multiple sectors, including smart vehicles and consumer electronics. The company currently operates five wafer fabrication plants, mastering all seven key stages from product definition and architectural design to circuit design, wafer manufacturing, packaging, and testing. BYD proudly claims to be ‘the only automaker globally capable of end-to-end chip manufacturing across all processes.’ The successful rollout of Xuanji A3 signifies BYD’s deep integration of software and hardware in its ADAS initiatives, effectively ending its historical reliance on third-party chips supplied by firms like Horizon Robotics.
This milestone represents a pivotal step in BYD’s broader intelligent technology roadmap. In 2025, the penetration rate of models equipped with BYD’s ‘Eye of God’ ADAS system briefly hit 71%, yet persistent concerns persisted regarding the company’s technological autonomy due to its prior dependence on externally sourced chips—a situation critics described as ‘computing power dictated by external suppliers,’ negatively impacting valuation metrics. Now, with Xuanji A3 entering mass production, BYD gains tangible leverage in its pursuit of becoming a recognized leader in automotive intelligence. From an industry standpoint, this development enables Chinese automakers to directly compete with NVIDIA’s Orin/Thor architectures in terms of computing capabilities within the strategically vital autonomous driving chip segment, while simultaneously reducing exposure to external risks related to export controls and supply chain security.