Buick's budget EV teaches tech titans a lesson in ADAS

In a major upset, a Buick electric car showed a field of high-priced, tech-heavy rivals how to properly (and safely) navigate a city. The SAIC-GM Buick Electra L7 clinched the top spot in a difficult autonomous driving test in Ningbo, China, despite being the cheapest car in the competition.

The event, run by the D1EV outlet, pitted 17 different electric cars against each other in a real-world test of their smart driver-help features. The Buick quietly outperformed EVs from companies like BYD, Xiaomi, and even Tesla.

The competition's results highlight a fascinating gap between price and performance. The winning Buick Electra L7 starts at just RMB 173,900 (about $24,420). The second-place finisher, the luxurious Yangwang U7 from BYD, costs RMB 628,000 (about $88,180). The third-place Zeekr 9X from Geely is not cheap either, at RMB {{469,900}} (about $65,980). It turns out that spending more on electric cars does not always buy you smarter technology.

Organizers kept the challenging route a secret until the very last minute, preventing automakers from cheating and programming their EVs for specific scenarios. The cars had to deal with 28 traffic lights and eight tricky test sites with narrow village roads, chaotic roundabouts, and blind turns. The test, officially called the Second China Intelligent Assisted Driving Competition, measured how well each "Navigate On Autopilot" (NOA) system could cope with unpredictable driving conditions.

Many of the most advanced electric cars struggled with simple tasks. One of the biggest surprises was the basic U-turn test. Apparently, this simple maneuver was not so simple for many competitors. The Yangwang U7, the Xiaomi YU7, and five other vehicles all failed by taking the wrong road. Two others, including the Li Auto L9, simply gave up and asked the human driver to take control.

Another major test separated the sharp-eyed from the blind. Testers placed a man-made obstacle - transparent plastic wrap - in the road. This challenge tricked most of the cars. Only six of the 17 EVs correctly identified the see-through barrier.

The successful cars, which included the Buick Electra L7, the Yangwang U7, and the Xiaomi YU7, all had one thing in common: LiDAR sensors. This test proved that camera-only systems, famously used by Tesla, could not see the obstacle. The Tesla Model 3 failed to spot the barrier.

The Electra L7 is the first car to use the new Momenta R6 Flywheel Big Model. This system's brain is trained on an enormous amount of real-world driving data - a reported 3 billion kilometers. This vast library of driving information allowed the Buick to make better decisions than its more expensive peers, proving that powerful, well-trained software can mean more than a high price tag.

Source (Chinese)