Chinese EV-maker BYD chooses Xilinx for driver-assist tech

Whether coupled with driver-assist features that watch the road or in-cabin monitoring systems that keep an eye on motorists, cameras are increasingly a central component of automotive technology.

Providing the chips that process data from those cameras has become a burgeoning new business, and Silicon Valley tech company Xilinx has been trying to increase its presence in the fledgling market.

The company did just that Tuesday, inking a deal with Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD to provide its Zynq chips for driver-assist applications in commercial and passenger vehicles. Xilinx will support features such as lane-departure warning, pedestrian detection and forward-collision warnings starting with 2019 vehicles.

“Front camera is an area that we definitely want to grow and take market share,” said Willard Tu, senior director of Xilinx’s automotive business. “This is only the tip of the iceberg.”

With BYD, there may be good reason to expect momentum. China’s government issued more stringent regulations requiring safety features in trucks and buses this year, and BYD potentially has a path toward expanded volume in the United States. The company produced approximately 45,000 buses in service across 300 cities.

BYD's North American volumes are small so far -- roughly 280 buses -- but Friday, the California Air Resources Board mandated a shift to electric buses running on public-transportation routes beginning in 2029.

Tu said an EV maker such as BYD is well-suited for Xilinx chips because they don’t use much power. While that’s less important in driver-assist features that don’t use much wattage to begin with, it becomes a differentiator in fully autonomous EVs, in which every watt consumed in processing will decrease the vehicles’ range. Their advanced driver assistance systems partnership has not been previously disclosed.

Xilinx has been selling chips to automakers and major suppliers for more than 12 years, according to the company. It has supplied roughly 55 million devices for use specifically in advanced driver assistance systems.

The BYD deal comes a week after Xilinx provided new insight into its partnership with Daimler, which formally started in June. Together the two companies said they’re developing an in-cabin personal assistant that recognizes gestures of occupants and can predict their needs, with Xilinx technology underpinning the cabin-facing cameras and artificial intelligence that makes such features possible.

Such technology might mean occupants can turn features on and off without touching buttons, but it could also someday allow ride-hailing vehicles to sense when a passenger has left sunglasses behind or more critically, alert tired parents that they may have forgotten a child still strapped in a seat.

“The evolution of this interior cabin could be a huge movement,” Tu said. “With an autonomous driving vehicle, you might know whether a car with expensive equipment has been vandalized or if late-night partiers might have had an accident. … But with the two, with Daimler and BYD, you can see companies identifying the same trends that involve the challenges of putting AI into their products.”