BYD has made one of the most unusual moves in the intelligent driving market. The company announced that it will independently cover damages from accidents that occurred while using the God's Eye Urban Navigate on Autopilot system and the automatic parking function. In fact, BYD has for the first time attempted to solve the main question of the entire semi-autonomous driving industry: who pays if a car gets into an accident while the driver assistance system is operating.

Under the terms of the program, the company promises to compensate for car repairs, damages to third parties, and other direct losses if the accident occurred with the correct use of the system. Coverage is valid for one year for new buyers and owners who have upgraded to God's Eye 5.0. At the same time, payments should not affect the cost of car insurance in the future.

BYD is launching the program at a time of fierce competition with Tesla, Xpeng, Nio, and Li Auto. While Tesla sells FSD as a premium feature, BYD is betting on mass appeal: the God's Eye B package costs about 12,000 yuan (126,000 rubles), which is about five times cheaper than FSD in some markets.

The company explains its confidence with a huge amount of data. According to BYD, there are already more than 3.15 million cars with the brand's intelligent systems on the roads, which collect about 200 million km of real-world operation daily.

But the main significance of the news lies deeper. Until now, almost all automakers have legally shifted responsibility to the driver even with active driving assistants. Now BYD is effectively turning trust in algorithms into a financial obligation.

This could be a new stage in market development. If such a model proves successful, competitors will face pressure not only in terms of technology but also in terms of the level of responsibility for the operation of their own autonomous driving systems.

Paradoxically, the industry is gradually beginning to compete not with the number of lidars and computational power, but with the readiness of manufacturers to be responsible for artificial intelligence decisions with their own money.