On May 28, BYD (002594.SZ) officially unveiled China's first 4nm automotive-grade intelligent driving chip, the "Xuanji A3", and commenced its large-scale mass production.

The total computing power of three chips exceeds 2100TOPS, with computing power utilization increased by 100% compared to industry norms, supporting high-level L3 and L4 autonomous driving.

This marks not only a crucial leap for BYD from an electric vehicle leader to an intelligent vehicle manufacturer but also breaks the long-term monopoly of overseas chip giants on high-end intelligent driving computing power.

Implementation of the 4nm Chip

The Xuanji A3 is not a laboratory prototype but an automotive-grade SoC (System on Chip) that has directly entered mass production.

The chip adopts a 4nm process, integrating a 16-core CPU with a DMIPS of 420K and a bandwidth of 273GB/s, achieving the highest functional safety level of ASIL-D.

Three chips are installed per vehicle, working collaboratively to deliver a total computing power exceeding 2100TOPS. Paired with BYD's self-developed algorithms for deep optimization, the power consumption per unit of computing power is reduced by approximately 20% compared to similar products.

At the launch event, Wang Chuanfu also announced the upgrade of the Tian Shen Zhi Yan intelligent driving system to the Xuanji Architecture 2.0, along with a commitment to "one-year safety assurance" for urban navigation.

This means that under equivalent hardware conditions, BYD can allocate more real computing power to perception and decision-making in complex scenarios, thereby shortening emergency braking response times and improving the success rate in long-tail scenarios such as unprotected left turns.

For a long time, the industry has been trapped in the dilemma of "overstated computing power and underutilized algorithms." With its integrated hardware-software design, the Xuanji A3 fully unleashes the hardware potential of high-level intelligent driving for the first time.

Confidence in Full-Link Manufacturing

Behind the Xuanji A3 lies BYD's over two decades of deep cultivation in the semiconductor industry chain.

Since establishing its IC design department in 2002, the company has now built a chip R&D team of over 7,000 people, invested over RMB 100 billion, and set up four R&D bases and five wafer fabrication plants, including China's largest 12-inch automotive-grade wafer fab.

As a result, BYD has become the world's only automaker mastering the full-process capabilities across seven key areas: product definition, architecture design, circuit design, wafer manufacturing, packaging, and testing.

To date, BYD has mass-produced 567 self-developed automotive-grade chips. This vertical integration model, similar to that of IDM giants, combined with the scale effect of over 4.6 million vehicle sales in 2025, can rapidly amortize the non-recurring engineering expenses of the Xuanji A3, forming a positive cycle of "sales feeding R&D and scale reducing intelligent driving costs."

Of course, at this stage, the yield of 4nm automotive-grade chips is still ramping up. The Xuanji A3 will initially be equipped in BYD's premium or flagship models before gradually being rolled out to other models.

Regardless, while most automakers are still waiting for foundry schedules, BYD has built itself the strongest supply chain bulwark with its self-owned wafer fab.

Three-Tier Premium Phase

The mass production of the Xuanji A3 is reshaping the capital market's pricing benchmarks for BYD.

Previously, the market primarily valued BYD based on its "new energy vehicles + batteries" business. However, with the self-developed high-computing-power chip filling the gap in intelligence, BYD has officially entered a three-tier premium phase of "vehicles + three electric systems + full-stack self-developed intelligent driving."

In terms of industry trends, 2025 is seen as a critical window for the commercialization of L3 autonomous driving, with policy pathways gradually opening up. An autonomous and cost-controllable high-performance intelligent driving solution is a prerequisite for L3 functions to transition from optional to standard features.

If BYD can reduce the hardware cost of high-level intelligent driving to the several thousand yuan (several thousand yuan) level with its self-developed chips, it has the potential to popularize urban navigation functions in the mainstream price range of RMB 150,000 to RMB 300,000, replicating its scale expansion path of "more features at the same price" in the electrification era.

For the industry, this will also weaken the premium capabilities of foreign chips from companies like NVIDIA and Qualcomm, driving the overall upgrade of China's automotive chip industry chain.

Challenges remain, as automotive-grade chips have long iteration cycles, and their architectures need to accommodate future algorithmic evolution. Nevertheless, BYD has redefined the competitive boundaries of the second half of the intelligence race with a wafer fab and a 4nm chip.