Watch out Kia, Hyundai and GWM! Chinese giant BYD tunes models Down Under to improve drive experience, safety and more

BYD is part of a growing list of car brands that conduct testing and calibration work in Australia to ensure its models are better suited to the conditions.

In fact, some of the tunes developed by the Australian-based engineers have been rolled out to models in global markets.

BYD Australia Senior Manager Product Planning and Pricing Sajid Hasan highlighted some of the work the Australian product engineering team is involved with.

“There's a team of about 25 engineers based locally that cover areas from vehicle chassis and suspension tuning, kind of like hardware type engineering, and then there's actually a surprisingly large team of engineers focused on the software. And that would be like ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems), infotainment, cloud services, the BYD app, any kind of software-related tuning,” he told CarsGuide.

Hasan confirmed that while some of the testing conducted in Australia will be for models that are locked in for this market, there are other vehicles testing here that are for global markets or China only.

“So I guess that's a bit of a heads up that if you do see something camouflaged hiding a BYD or a Denza badge on the road, it's not a given that it will be coming to our market.

“But I guess it's good that they are doing that, because it means that some of our road conditions and our market expectations and the customer requirements are seen as very key for right-hand-drive market development.

“And that means that the Australian market’s requirements are kind of feeding in and having a bigger sway into global development.”

Hasan highlighted how Australia’s road conditions have helped the development team.

“About 80 per cent of the world's road conditions are actually contained here in Australia, as a fairly large country. So I guess maybe there's no surprise there. But it's seen as a very important market for tuning and development.”

BYD is not alone in using Australian knowhow to improve the ride and handling qualities of its models. Brands like Ford and Toyota have been testing and developing models Down Under for global consumption for decades.

More recently, Korean giants Hyundai and Kia have done local tuning on the models the offer in Australia, although Hyundai has recently started implementing these tunes in the development stages in Korea, based on feedback from the Australian team.

Fellow Chinese carmaker GWM recently announced a new local tuning outfit led by former Holden ride and handling expert, Rob Trubiani.