- BYD plans to debut its in-house developed Xuanji A3 chip in a new production vehicle under the Denza brand in 2027. - BYD unveiled the Xuanji A3 in May, China's first smart driving chip built on a 4nm process. BYD (HKEX: 1211) plans to equip a new Denza-brand production model with its in-house developed Xuanji A3 smart driving chip for the first time in 2027, according to a Sunday report by local media outlet LatePost. The company unveiled the Xuanji A3 on May 28, China's first smart driving chip built on a 4nm process. This marks a key step in BYD's vertical integration in the smart driving space, though the timing for mass production was not disclosed. A smart driving chip typically needs at least a year to go from tape-out to deployment in a vehicle, LatePost cited an employee of an ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) solution provider that develops its own chips as saying. The chip itself, algorithm deployment, and vehicle integration all need to be verified one by one, so the window for getting a chip into a car is hard to compress, the person said. Information released by BYD shows that a single Xuanji A3 chip delivers more than 700 TOPS of computing power. Three chips working together provide a combined total of over 2,100 TOPS, supporting L3 and L4 autonomous driving. The company said the Xuanji A3 consumes 20% less power per unit of computing power than comparable products. After optimization with in-house developed algorithms, its computing power utilization has improved by 100%. Developing proprietary chips is becoming a key strategy for Chinese EV makers to build a moat in the AI era. Nio Inc (NYSE: NIO), Xpeng (NYSE: XPEV), and Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI) have all launched their own in-house developed smart driving