BYD Continues To Accelerate Their Technology Lead Over Tesla And Tesla Doesn’t Appear To Be Even Trying To Keep Up

China is fast becoming the world's EV leader, and in China, BYD has stepped ahead of its competition as well. Tesla appears to have lost focus. While their new Model Y is a decent linear improvement over the older model and looks substantially better, feature for feature, it hasn’t advanced as quickly as BYD has been advancing.

Let’s explore some of the features that BYD has recently brought to the market with little or no challenge from Tesla.

Tank Turns

This is a fascinating feature and works on EVs that have four motors. The car runs the tires at slow speed in opposite directions on either side of the car, allowing for far easier parking and the ability for the car to turn on its axis in a tight spot without doing a Bootlegger turn. How you use this for parking, and this only requires two individual motors in the rear, is you put the front end of the car into the parking space and easily pivot the back end of the car into the space, far faster and far more quickly than using regular parallel parking even with rear wheel steering. 

This feature is incredibly handy, but it really only works in EVs. No Western EV, including Tesla, has yet showcased this feature.

The Ability To Drive In Deep Water

While Cybertruck has trouble with car washes, BYD has an SUV that, if it is caught in deep water, can continue to function as if it were amphibious. Try to do this in any car, let alone a Tesla. This would be particularly useful in areas with flash floods or, given climate change, hefty rains where you can’t tell the depth of the water you are driving in. If you drive them through deep water, gas cars will likely hydrolock.

No matter where you live in the world, you are likely to increasingly experience deep water, and if your EV shorts out or your gas car hydro locks, you are pretty much done. A hydrolocked engine needs to be rebuilt, and a Tesla with water damage is no walk in the park either.

Jumping Suspension

The ability to jump over obstacles comes when you move from air to hydraulic adjustable suspension. Air suspension will raise and lower the car slowly, but the latest hydraulic suspension can get the car to jump. So if there is an object on the road, the car can jump over it (makes you wonder if this would work with stop sticks, it’d be cool in an action movie). In this video you see the BYD Yanwang (unfortunate name) supercar jump over some obstacles.

Particularly if you have low-profile wheels and tires, potholes can spoil your entire week and destroy your tire, wheel, and front suspension. The only other car company that has fielded fast hydraulic suspension is Audi with their 2025 E-Tron GT Performance, and while it is far faster than their old air-based system, the Audi doesn't jump.

Autonomous Driving

BYD has a system called “God’s Eye” and it is currently significantly outperforming Tesla’s FSD. Tesla over promised on their “Autopilot” system and many folks died.  Tesla’s Autopilot isn’t full self-driving, it is a decent level 2+ system, but with the “Autopilot” name, it should be at least a Level 3, and ideally a Level 4 or 5. BYD has three systems, their level C system, which goes on their least expensive cars, similar to what Tesla has fielded, and their B and A systems, which go on more expensive cars. The higher end systems could be defined as Level 4 (working autonomously in both city and highway areas). However, I’d likely peg them as Level 4- given where the technology is but far more advanced than Tesla.

Drone Option

While Audi showcased a prototype car with this capability a few months back, BYD is bringing it to market in partnership with DJI. This Drone option integrates into the roof of one of their SUVs to provide wide-ranging drone coverage if you are off road, in heavy traffic, broken down, or otherwise need to see what is around. You can also use it to take pictures of you driving or interesting shots of things you couldn’t see in your car. There will be restrictions on its use, but as Audi showcased in their video, this could be a game changer if you drive at night with limited vision ahead and want to anticipate or avoid obstacles.

While I doubt it will be a cheap upcharge, it should be affordable for those that need or want some of the features this drone option provides. 

Wrapping Up: Flying Cars

BYD is aggressively moving around Tesla and appears to be outselling Tesla in several markets. While I think they need to westernize their naming, they are miles ahead of Tesla with their technology. They have already started to showcase a flying car prototype (and they aren’t the only Chinese company to do it) that is currently in test, though it isn’t expected to reach the market until 2030 (the video says 2026 but I have my doubts). Granted some regulatory issues will need to be solved and I doubt this will be inexpensive either, but the design looks far more helpful than other recent flying car concepts I’ve seen.  I’d take the $7K price with a massive grain of salt, but it should be an interesting option and, again, they appear ahead of everyone else.

If Tesla doesn’t get their act together, BYD leaves them in the dust. 

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery developments. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.