BYD Co (OTC:BYDDY), the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in China, is well aware of its lag behind competitors in autonomous driving technology. In order to address this weakness, the company has established a new division and launched an extensive recruitment campaign.
During an investor forum this month, Senior Vice President Stella Li revealed that BYD Co has successfully recruited approximately 4,000 to 5,000 software engineers. In a transcript verified by the company, she stated, "Although we are currently not leading the pack, we are committed to delivering a wide range of innovations within the next two to three years."
Ongoing BYD recruitment advertisements aimed at top Chinese universities, such as Zhejiang University, emphasize the company's interest in hiring engineers specializing in autonomous driving, and indicate that the hiring process is still in progress.
According to sources familiar with the matter, engineers involved in autonomous driving at BYD were previously dispersed across different departments. However, with the establishment of a new division, there will be a greater emphasis and concentration on BYD's efforts in high-level automated driving technologies.
During the first quarter, BYD sold around 510,000 pure electric and plug-in hybrid cars in China. Accounting for nearly 40% of the total sales of such vehicles in the country, and surpassing Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) by almost four times.
Currently, the majority of BYD's vehicles are equipped with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) developed by Bosch. As opposed to rivals like Tesla, Xpeng (NYSE:XPEV), Nio (NYSE:NIO) and Li Auto Inc (NASDAQ:LI), who have developed their own automated driving features that are more advanced.
This year, BYD has also teamed up with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Horizon Robotics, saying it wanted to develop more intelligent vehicles. Nvidia's Orin, one of the world's most powerful autonomous driving computing platforms, will be used in its next-generation Dynasty and Ocean series of cars. While, according to sources, the Horizon Robotics' Journey 5, a lower-cost alternative to Orin, will be used in BYD's Han sedans.
Shares of TSLA, XPEV, NIO and LI are down 0.60%, 0.84%, 0.76% and 1.27% respectively, while shares of NVDA are up 1.26% in pre-market trading on Wednesday.