Strictly talking, God’s Eye is the digicam, ultrasonic radar, and lidar array alone, break up into A, B, and C variants, with A being finest. The system’s working software program is called DiPilot, launched in 2020 on the BYD Han, and now with the nice, higher, and finest tiers of DiPilot 100, 300, and 600.
God’s Eye A ships with DiPilot 600 and bristles with high-end cameras and radar, and front- and side-facing lidar sensors. This finest system shall be fitted to BYD’s luxurious Yangwang EVs, together with the U9 supercar. “The video of the U9 [on the track] was theater,” believes Rainford, who hasn’t heard of any autonomous driving system that may “make a automobile’s tires squeal round corners.”
Rainford provides that BYD is enjoying catch-up: “2024 was a breakout yr for urban-level autonomous driving programs in China, with the front-runners of Li Auto, XPeng, Nio, and Huawei joined by rivals resembling Zeekr, Wey, and much more inexpensive manufacturers like Leapmotor.”
God’s Eye B has cameras, radar, and one lidar unit married to DiPilot 300, and shall be fitted to Denza, Track, and BYD’s different high-end vehicles. Each A and B God’s Eye programs supply FSD-style L2+ ADAS driving.
God’s Eye C with DiPilot 100 has cameras and radar, however no lidar, which may very well be akin to worshipping a “God with nearsightedness,” Peter Norton, affiliate professor of historical past within the Division of Engineering and Society on the College of Virginia, tells WIRED.
“Like Tesla’s FSD, drivers with God’s Eye C aren’t supposed to make use of it away from divided highways. However presumably some BYD drivers, like some Tesla drivers, will apply it to atypical roads anyway—with typically probably deadly penalties,” says Norton, writer of a book on autonomous driving. He worries that BYD’s use of divine terminology might result in a false sense of safety. “There’s no try and warning drivers concerning the system’s limitations,” he stresses.
Rainford, too, cautions that God’s Eye isn’t but excellent. “It’s manner overhyped,” he says, pointing to the glowing press protection of final week’s launch. “I drove DiPilot 100 final yr on the BYD Track L, and it was removed from nice, requiring lever-activated overtakes. Even on the freeway it was not even near the [LDAS] market leaders in China.”
Although it’s not yet allowed in China, Tesla’s FSD is believed by some to be technically inferior as a result of it depends solely on cameras and AI, moderately than lidar and different sensors.
“Tesla has been overselling the effectiveness of its expertise for years,” Michael Brooks, government director of the nonprofit Middle for Auto Security, told NPR last month. “And lots of people purchase into that. They’re type of wrapped up on this perception that that is an autonomous automobile, as a result of it’s tweeted about that manner.”
Musk has been promising the upcoming arrival of absolutely autonomous vehicles since at the very least 2016. At a Tesla shareholder meeting last year, Musk claimed the variety of miles that FSD can drive with out human intervention has elevated. “It’s headed in direction of unsupervised full self-driving in a short time, at an exponential tempo,” Musk claimed.