Gasgoo Munich- Yinwang recently announced that Huawei’s Qiankun driver-assistance system has become the second in the industry to offer comprehensive underwriting for assisted driving incidents.
The new coverage and service benefits for the ADS advanced package apply to accidents that occur while the vehicle is operating legally on public roads. It covers personal injury and property damage to both the vehicle’s occupants and third parties resulting from unexpected incidents during normal use of Huawei’s Qiankun ADS system.
On the same day, Huawei also unveiled pricing adjustments for its Qiankun ADS Max advanced package. The suggested one-time purchase price reverted to the standard 36,000 yuan from 32,000 yuan, while the final price after automaker subsidies increased to 15,000 yuan from 12,000 yuan.
It has been less than a month since BYD became the first to announce underwriting for its city navigation assist in late May. While Huawei moved quickly, the public debate over these guarantees is far more complex than expected. Some applaud the move as the moment automakers start paying the price for their own technology; others dismiss it as little more than a rebranded insurance policy for smart driving.
Behind the controversy lies a question that has been asked repeatedly without a standard answer: When driver-assistance systems fail, who is ultimately responsible?
BYD Leads the Way, Huawei Follows Suit
On May 28, BYD held an intelligent strategy conference where Chairman Wang Chuanfu announced the company would provide safety guarantees for its city navigation assist feature.
Specifically, for users equipped with the "DiGod" A or B driver-assistance systems, BYD will fully cover direct economic losses from at-fault accidents that occur while using the city navigation function legally. There is no cap on the payout, and the claim does not affect the owner’s commercial vehicle insurance. This isn’t BYD’s first such promise; in July 2025, the company already introduced a safety guarantee for intelligent parking.
BYD’s guarantee is not without conditions. Models equipped with the DiGod C driver-assistance system must first pay a 12,000 yuan upgrade fee to qualify for coverage—up from the previous option price of 9,900 yuan.
At the same time, BYD announced that its entire lineup can be optioned with the DiGod B LiDAR driver-assistance system for 12,000 yuan. In other words, the guarantee isn’t free: users must either purchase higher-end hardware or pay to upgrade.
Image Source: Huawei
Huawei, however, is moving even faster. On June 22, Yinwang announced new coverage and service benefits for the ADS advanced package, extending protection to city NCA, highway NCA, and all parking scenarios. The coverage is similar to BYD’s: if an accident occurs during normal use of the driver-assistance system, the company bears the cost of personal injury and property damage for both the occupants and third parties.
But there are nuances in Huawei’s plan worth noting. First, the coverage period is tied to the purchase date: users who buy the advanced package before the July 1 price adjustment get one year of coverage, while those buying after get three years.
Second, Huawei attributes the price hike to rising hardware costs. TrendForce data shows spot prices for high-end automotive-grade DDR5 have surged over 300%, as demand for high-compute chips from AI companies squeezes automotive-grade capacity. The auto industry, now at the bottom of the supply chain pecking order, is forced to buy expensive chips on the spot market. While this explanation holds water within the industry, it’s hard for consumers not to wonder: is the cost of underwriting ultimately being passed down to the buyer?
Despite their differences, both companies’ plans point in the same direction: automakers are starting to put real money behind the risks of driver-assistance accidents. Previously, the industry standard was for users to buy smart-driving insurance, with insurers handling claims. The BYD and Huawei model effectively shifts automakers from being technology providers to risk bearers—at least financially.
One distinction must be made clear: the guarantee covers property damage and personal injury compensation, but criminal liability and license points related to the accident still fall on the driver. A guiding case published by the Supreme People’s Court in February 2026 also clarified that in-vehicle driver-assistance systems cannot replace the human driver as the primary driving entity. The driver remains the person actually performing the driving task after activating the system. In other words, automakers are underwriting the money, not the law.
The Mismatch Between Hype and Liability
The attention generated by BYD and Huawei’s moves stems largely from the deep chasm that has opened up between marketing and liability for Level 2 driver-assistance systems in recent years.
The Chinese auto industry has waged a brutal battle around driver assistance over the past few years. From the city-by-city expansion of the map-dependent era to the map-independent promise of "drivable anywhere," and now the shift to end-to-end, door-to-door technology, automakers have spared no effort in marketing "smart driving" as omnipotent.
In promotional videos, steering wheels turn themselves and lane changes are fluid, while owners sit back handling work. The message is clear: this car can drive for you.
But open the owner’s manual, and the rhetoric shifts entirely: "Level 2 driver assistance requires the driver to be responsible at all times," or "The system is an aid, not a replacement—keep hands on the wheel." The industry still lacks an authoritative definition for "high-level smart driving," and excessive marketing by some automakers has led consumers to conflate driver assistance with full autonomy.
Image Source: Huawei
Insiders sum up this gap between marketing and reality in one sentence: it’s called "smart driving" when it’s sold, but "driver assistance" when there’s an accident.
The consequences are obvious. Accidents occurring while smart driving is engaged are commonplace: some vehicles emergency-brake due to system misjudgment, triggering rear-end collisions, while others strike pedestrians because the driver wasn't paying attention in assist mode.
Only recently, there was news of a ride-hailing driver caught napping while relying on smart driving for 95% of the trip. When accidents happen, the debate often centers not on flaws in the technology itself, but on the idea that "drivers shouldn't fully trust driver assistance." Automakers enjoy the premiums and traffic generated by these features, yet consumers bear all the risk.
Legal frameworks are lagging as well. Standards for determining accident liability for Level 3 autonomous driving and above have not yet been clearly defined. In December 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially granted the first batch of entry permits for Level 3 conditionally autonomous vehicles; by June 2026, it was soliciting public opinion on a mandatory national standard for the safety of intelligent connected vehicle autonomous driving systems. These moves show regulation is accelerating, but in the transition window between Level 2 and Level 3, gray areas in liability allocation remain.
The underwriting by BYD and Huawei is, in some ways, a patch for this rift. It answers at least one question: if an accident occurs while the driver-assistance function is active and used properly, the user won’t have to shoulder the financial burden alone.
But this is still a long way from true clarity on liability. Deeper issues—such as criminal liability attribution, the determination of system defects, and the admissibility of data records—have not disappeared simply because of financial guarantees.
Some argue that the commitments from BYD and Huawei mark a critical turning point for China’s advanced driver-assistance sector—shifting from a battle of specifications to a battle of responsibility. That judgment may be premature, but the direction is right. Technology can iterate, and marketing can be corrected, but once consumer trust in safety collapses, the cost to rebuild it is far higher than imagined. Underwriting is not the finish line—it is the starting point.
