Hit from memory costs spreads from phones to EVs as China’s BYD raises driving-tech price

The impact of sky-high costs for memory chips is spreading from smartphones to cars, as China’s electric vehicle (EV) king BYD announced a 21 per cent price increase for its high-end driver-assistance system.Starting on Friday, the price of the optional DiPilot 300 assisted-driving system would rise to 12,000 yuan ($1,757) from 9,900 yuan, BYD said on Tuesday, attributing the decision to “the sharp rise in global storage hardware costs”.The system, which allows cars to navigate themselves on highways and conduct self-parking, is available in the company’s mid-range and premium models. It employs lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors and requires memory chips for data buffering, processing and storage.Premium cars would be the next category of consumer products hit hard by the memory “super cycle”, according to analysts.“High-end car models rely heavily on lidar, multichannel high-pixel cameras and millimetre-wave radar,” said Chen Hongyan, an analyst with TrendForce. “They require high-performance chips paired with large-capacity, high-bandwidth memory.”The impact would be uneven across the market as mid-range models would “bear the brunt of it”, while high-end buyers were “generally less sensitive to price changes”, said Kevin Li, associate director at Counterpoint Research. “Low-end models typically don’t include these expensive tech packages in the first place.”Li added that price hikes were “spreading to more consumer-electronics categories that use [memory chips], such as tablets and virtual reality headsets”. For example, ByteDance’s virtual reality unit Pico told distributors that it would increase wholesale prices starting on July 1 owing to higher memory costs and supply chain instability.