BYD offers unlimited payouts for autopilot crashes in China

BYD unlimited – BYD says it will cover every cost—repairs, property damage, and medical expenses—if its “God’s Eye” autonomous driving system causes an accident in China, with no monetary ceiling. The policy began with smart parking in July 2025, expanded to City Navigation o

A retractable ground lock failed to rise in an underground garage, and a Denza Z9GT scraped the barrier before it could correct course. The owner called BYD’s after-sales team, anxious whether any guarantee would apply.

Three BYD staff arrived, pulled the vehicle’s data logs, and delivered a verdict within moments: “Nothing to discuss—free repair.”

That quick decision sits at the center of BYD’s pledge in autonomous driving—one it says no automaker has dared to offer. The China-based electric vehicle maker is promising to pay every bill when its “God’s Eye” autonomous driving system causes an accident: repairs. third-party property damage. and personal injury costs. BYD says there is no price ceiling, no fine print, and no blame-shifting back to the driver.

While the guarantee is currently limited to China, the policy is already being tested in real incidents and tied to BYD’s broader push to grow the amount of on-road data collected from its system.

BYD’s autonomous driving platform was displayed during the 30th Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Auto Show on June 8, 2026.

The coverage first arrived with BYD’s full self-parking feature in July 2025. The company says that after the parking guarantee launched, smart parking usage among God’s Eye owners rose from 21% to 93%. BYD links the surge to more edge-case data. which it says feeds back into improving AI models faster than competitors that cannot afford to accept liability.

Then. starting on May 28. BYD extended the same core idea to City Navigation. the God’s Eye 5.0 feature for urban route guidance without driver input. The City Navigation guarantee covers 12 months. That 12-month window starts either from vehicle delivery for new buyers or from the moment an existing owner installs the qualifying OTA update. BYD contrasts that with its Intelligent Parking guarantee, which runs for the lifetime of the vehicle.

Both guarantees, BYD says, absorb the financial consequences of incidents—vehicle repair, third-party property damage, and personal injury—without a monetary cap and without affecting the driver’s own insurance record. Still, BYD drivers outside China are not covered; both guarantees are China-only.

The company’s claims process is direct. When an accident occurs during smart parking or City Navigation. the owner contacts BYD’s after-sales service directly rather than filing through their insurer. BYD dispatches technicians to inspect the scene and pull backend vehicle data. BYD says its data logs record virtually every action the system took during the incident.

If the data confirms the system was active and at fault because of an algorithm error or sensor failure. BYD pays with no argument. In multiparty accidents, traffic authorities determine responsibility. If the BYD system is found at fault, BYD pays. If the other party is at fault, that party’s insurer pays. BYD also draws a line based on log evidence: if backend data shows the driver was manually in control when the incident occurred. BYD does not pay.

The City Navigation guarantee, BYD says, moved from announcement to payment quickly. Within days of the May 28 extension. the Chinese auto industry outlet Gasgoo reported a confirmed City Navigation payout involving a Denza Z9GT in City Navigation mode. In that case, the vehicle collided with another car and failed to trigger emergency avoidance. The driver, Ms. Chen, manually braked, but only after the car had made a mistake, according to the vehicle log.

BYD says its autonomous driving platform is already running across the Chinese auto market. The company claims it leads every automaker in China—domestic or foreign—in vehicles running an intelligent driving system. citing 3.15 million units on the road. On those vehicles. BYD says the system takes the wheel for more than half of all miles driven. with an autonomous usage rate of 50.91%. BYD uses that real-world data pool as the basis for its promise of unconditional coverage.

At the launch of the guarantee, BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu said: “The first half of electrification is all about batteries, while the second half is all about [AI chips and software].”

The contrast with Tesla has become hard to miss. Tesla has spent years selling its autonomy package while insisting—through changing legal language—that the system remains “supervised.” But according to the EV publication Electrek. Tesla retroactively altered previously signed Full Self-Driving purchase agreements to insert the “supervised” language. In many cases. owners say the original documents have been made unreachable because the links lead to invalid pages. leaving them unable to retrieve the contracts that prove what Tesla originally sold.

Tesla introduced its self-driving package as a standalone software add-on in 2016. promising buyers that over-the-air updates would eventually make the car capable of driving without any human involvement. For eight years. across every vehicle it sold. Tesla made no mention anywhere in its sales agreements that a human would need to remain in control.

Buyers paid up to $15. 000 for the package—named “Full Self-Driving (FSD)”—while Tesla marketed it as a route to complete autonomy. Tesla’s approach only shifted in March 2024, when software version 12.3.3 arrived with a new “Supervised” add-on. That was the first time the accompanying legal text acknowledged that owning it did not mean owning a car that could drive without human oversight.

By September 2025. Tesla had abandoned its original promise. redefining FSD with language vague enough for the current supervised system to satisfy. Tesla claims the vehicles it plans to launch will not have a steering wheel or pedals. A prototype of the Tesla Cybercab was shown in San Jose in March 2026.

The legal and business risk around Tesla is also substantial. Tesla faces a potential liability of up to $14.5 billion in lawsuits globally, alleging false advertising, autopilot crash liability, and securities fraud.

Adding to the tension, Musk has confirmed that cars produced between 2016 and 2023—which had contracts referencing the earlier promise—are physically incapable of achieving unsupervised FSD due to hardware limitations. Tesla has no concrete plan to retrofit those vehicles.

For all the technology talk, the two companies are essentially offering buyers different answers to the same question: what happens when something goes wrong?

BYD’s approach ties its autonomy promise to logs and payments—built around an insistence that it will cover every expense with no monetary ceiling. at least within China and within specific time windows for City Navigation. Tesla’s approach. as owners describe it. has moved the legal goalposts by rewriting agreements and acknowledging that the earlier unsupervised promise cannot be delivered for certain hardware.

The dispute isn’t only about software versions. It is about trust—whether customers believe the words in a contract match what the system can do, and whether the costs of an accident are owned up front.

BYD’s own data-driven message is that people will let the car drive when they feel protected. After its parking guarantee launched in July 2025, smart parking usage jumped from 21% to 93%. City Navigation coverage begins on May 28 and comes with 12-month protections tied to vehicle delivery or the qualifying OTA installation. and BYD says it has already logged at least one confirmed payout in the days after the policy began.

Unless something structurally radical happens in the American auto industry, the gap between companies is not framed here as a missing product feature. It is framed as a trust gap—one that determines how quickly drivers feel safe enough to hand over control.

BYD, for its part, is betting that unconditional financial liability can turn real-world incidents into safer outcomes—and more data. Tesla. meanwhile. is operating under a model where—at least for many buyers—the paperwork has changed. and the original promise is now constrained by supervision and by hardware limits.

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