BYD will pay every last cent for any damage caused by its autopilot

BYD, the China-based maker of electric vehicles, has done something no automaker has dared to do: It’s promising to pay every bill—repairs, property damage, medical costs—when its God’s Eye autonomous driving system causes an accident. No price ceiling. No fine print. No blame-shifting to the driver. No insurance claim that haunts you for years. Just a review of the car’s system logs, and you get your back covered till every expense derived from the accident has been satisfied. While this guarantee is currently limited to one year, and is available only in China, it’s still a wow moment that the autonomous driving industry has been waiting for—and dreading, depending on which side of the Pacific you’re parked on. [Image: BYD] Take Tesla, which has spent eight years promising full autonomy. The company sold “Full Self-Driving” as a feature buyers could purchase for up to $15,000 on top of the car’s base price. This came with the promise that over-the-air (OTA) updates would eventually make the car capable of driving itself without any human involvement. It never delivered. Tesla is facing a potential liability of up to $14.5 billion in lawsuits globally, alleging false advertising, autopilot crash liability, and securities fraud. This could explain why the company has been quietly editing its original purchase agreements—remotely changing “Full Self-Driving” to “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” language that did not exist when buyers signed and paid. In many cases, the original contracts are now inaccessible, the links leading to invalid web pages, leaving owners who are seeking refunds for the autonomous driving capability they were promised unable to retrieve the very documents that prove what Tesla originally sold them. Meanwhile, BYD has been covering the actions of its full self-parking feature since July 2025, in the same way it will do now with its cars driving autonomously in the city. The firs