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BYD has confirmed it uses Australia as a testbed for future and global products, thanks to our country's unique road conditions and climate.
Australia’s unique road and climate conditions have made it an ideal testing ground for BYD products around the world, according to the Chinese brand.
Speaking to Drive, BYD Australia Head of Product Sajid Hasan said head office often sends new products Down Under for testing and validation, making it a crucial market.
“You’ll see the camouflaged models driving around, and some of those are models are coming to Australia,” Hasan said.
“But because Australia’s road conditions – the amount of variety of roads that we have in Australia actually represent or comprise about 80 per cent of the world’s roads.
“So they will actually do a lot of the testing here, but it will be applied for production and tuning settings for other countries.
“But it just means that Australia is an important country to not only sell into, but also to do the development.”
BYD models spotted testing in Australia, which have not yet launched locally, include the Denza B5 off-roader, Yangwang U8 luxury SUV, and Song Pro DM-i plug-in hybrid.
However, BYD also conducted local testing of Sealion 7 electric vehicle (EV) and Shark 6 plug-in ute ahead of their respective launches.
Hasan said each new BYD Australia product goes through a thorough tuning and localisation program before reaching customers, not just for software tweaks, but also suspension and handling.
“The Australian market’s requirements in terms of chassis and suspension tuning is also kind of unique,” Hasan said.
“For road usage and city usage, we prefer a firmer, sharper handling and ride characteristic compared to some other Asian countries, so more aligned to Europe in that regard, but our road conditions are not as good as European roads.
“We do have this unique tune.
“And then our traffic signs, speed limiting information, ADAS, road markings – they’re all different.
“We don’t just deploy an overseas software for that sort of thing, it just wouldn’t work, so we do [local tuning work].”
BYD Australia employs 25 engineers located in Sydney and Melbourne to conduct the tuning and conformity testing, and has committed to evaluating each new vehicle that comes to local showrooms.
In a similar vein, Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, and Ford also employee local engineers to undertake testing, tuning, and tweaking of certain models for Australian models to varying degrees.
Meanwhile, almost all manufacturers need to change driver-assistance software to work with local road signs and markings.
Tung Nguyen has been in the automotive journalism industry for over a decade, cutting his teeth at various publications before finding himself at Drive in 2024. With experience in news, feature, review, and advice writing, as well as video presentation skills, Tung is a do-it-all content creator. Tung’s love of cars first started as a child watching Transformers on Saturday mornings, as well as countless hours on PlayStation’s Gran Turismo, meaning his dream car is a Nissan GT-R, with a Liberty Walk widebody kit, of course.
