BYD Semiconductor has begun mass production of a 4D millimetre-wave radar chip of its own design. Conventional automotive radar measures range, angle and speed but not elevation, which is why it struggles to tell a low bridge from a stopped vehicle. The fourth dimension is height.
Affected#
No car on the road today. This is a component entering production, not a feature arriving in a vehicle, and BYD has not said which models will carry it.
It is worth recording because of what it says about direction. BYD already builds its own cells, motors and power electronics; a radar chip and the processor behind it move driver assistance into the same category. For anyone studying what the head unit and the ADAS stack actually talk to, this is the supplier answer changing.
Confirmed#
| Status | in mass production |
| Detection range | more than 400 m |
| Angular resolution | 0.8 degrees |
| Range resolution | 0.05 m, described as parking-grade |
| Channels | 8 transmit, 8 receive |
| Process | 28 nm automotive-grade |
| Architecture | satellite arrangement around BYD’s in-house Xuanji A3 driving chip |
BYD states that solutions built on it can support driver assistance from Level 2 to Level 4. The Xuanji A3 itself is planned to appear first in a mass-produced Denza model in 2027.
Unconfirmed#
- Which cars. No model, market or date has been named for a vehicle carrying this radar.
- What “supports Level 4” means. That is a claim about what the silicon can compute, not about a car that drives itself, and no regulator has approved anything on that basis.
- Whether it reaches Europe. ADAS features are homologated per market, and hardware shipping in China does not imply the same function is legal or enabled here.
- Any of the figures independently. All of them are BYD’s, published by BYD, with no third-party measurement.