China's Byton weighs safety and future as it unveils first autonomous model in wake of Tesla, Uber crashes

It seems clear enough that the level of automation is going to increase in the vehicles of the future, but how much is too much?
For Chinese-backed electric car start-up Byton, that future of fully self-driving vehicles would most probably take place first in controlled settings where every car or bus is piloted by computers, before being rolled out to wider, messier traffic environments.
To prepare for that future, whenever it might arrive, the Nanjing-based carmaker unveiled on Tuesday its first concept sedan that can drive itself under most conditions without human intervention. The model will feature Lidar, or a sensing technology using lasers to measure distances, and is expected to start production in 2021.

“Autonomous driving is clearly our goal,” Daniel Kirchert, Byton’s co-founder and president, said in Shanghai at an event showcasing the model. “The sedan will showcase how real smart intuitive cars will look like.”

Besides the sedan, Byton earlier introduced an SUV with a lower level of autonomous driving capability that is slated to be sold in China starting from the fourth quarter of 2019, followed shortly by in Europe and the US.

Both Byton models will feature an edge-to-edge dashboard display, with on-board voice assistant and gesture control, according to Kirchert, who formerly headed Infiniti’s China operations. The models will cost about 40 per cent less than a Tesla Model X.

“It’s very important for a brand to show its designs across different products and become instantly recognisable,” he said. “It’s a beautiful sedan with futuristic design, very progressive but still aesthetic, not too aggressive,” said Kirchert. Byton chose to launch its concept sedan on the eve of the Asian edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which begins on Wednesday.