BEIJING, March 22 (TMTPOST)— BYD Co., a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker backed by legendary billionaire investor Warren Buffett for more than a decade, is seeking to expand beyond its comfort zone.

Source: Visual China

BYD has launched a smart watch and started the vehicle owners’ experience test, Chinese media outlet The Paper learned from the company’s official website. The new watch has multiple features to control vehicles such as to vehicle search, remote start and intelligent unlocking, as well as to heart rate check, exercise records and other health features. As a premium product designed for vehicles, the watch will go on sale in April and some car owners have tested it at the moment as the relevant new offering can be found in the BYD Auto app, BYD said, not disclosing any further details such as size, pricing or debut date.  

BYD’s move effectively confirmed recent rumor about the smart watch, which is deemed as its initial effort for the wearable device. In the beginning of this month, an official WeChat account of BYD announced to begin its smart watch beta test with 20 car owners as the first participants. The out-of-box experience video later showed the watch adopts a circular dial design, with a power button at the lower left corner, a car unlock button at the upper right corner and a lock button at the lower right corner. According to the video and relevant screen shots showed BYD touted the offering as an exclusively customized high-tech smart watch serving as a replacement for the traditional car key. The watch boasts a range of features including smart ignition, seamless entry, smart locking, window control, and tailgate opening. Like many smart watches available in the market, it has date display, heart rate monitoring, exercise data recording, sleep monitoring, call reminder, information push, weather forecast and many other features. Users are provided various dial interfaces to choose. With 360×360 resolution sapphire screen, the watch is equipped with a medical-grade heart rate sensor, daily water resistance, and its 200mAh battery delivers 5 to 7 days’ full-time use and 30-day standby. The budget is compatible with smart phones installed Android 4.4 and iOS 7.1 or later versions.

Earlier this month, BYD was reported to use commercial vehicles as a new source to boost sales. A report from the Wall Street Journal said BYD plans to launch new commercial models in markets including China, Japan and Europe in the coming three years, and has developed a budget of more than US$20 billion for its commercial vehicle unit by 2025, mainly funding research, product development and capacity expansion.

It is reported that BYD estimated sales of the commercial vehicle to recover in China even the national new energy vehicle (NEV) purchase subsidy policy expired at the end of 2022. Such subsidies helped NEVs increase to 26% of new passenger car registrations in China in 2022, compared with 6% two year earlier. ING Group expected the percentage this year to be slightly up to 27.5%.

The report came days after Tesla’s Chinese rivals posted rally from massive slowdown in delivery. BYD sales in February jumped 119.37% from a year earlier, compared with a 62.44% growth in previous month. Aion, Li Auto and NIO surged 253%, 97.5% and 98.3% respectively. Sales were fueled by automakers’ big promotion including price cuts, as well as economic simulative measures unveiled by local governments, China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) analyzed.