- Hey everyone, this is Sean O'Kane from The Verge,
and I'm about to drive the Byton M-Byte electric SUV.
Let's go for a ride.
(door closing)
(upbeat music)
Now in case you don't know who Byton is,
they're one of the many EV startups around the world,
that are trying to bring an electric vehicle
to market.
They're based in China and they basically made
their public debut here,
at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2018,
where they showed off a concept version of this car.
Now they've spent the two years since then,
refining the car and getting it ready for mass manufacturing
at their plant in Nanjing, China
and the version that I got to drive here today,
is the second pre-production prototype
to have rolled off that factory line.
Now Byton's whole thing isn't about really crazy performance
or super high luxury, what they really are talking about
doing with their cars, is changing the whole paradigm
around user experience.
And the focal point of that is obviously
that massive screen.
It's the first thing you notice
when you look at this car.
It's 48 inches long and it stretches
from pillar to pillar.
It's a very divisive thing
and a lot of people have been really worried
about what it would be like to drive
with a screen that big, in front of you.
And I gotta say, just from spending a couple minutes
in the car, I can understand how you might be able
to literally look past it.
The screen is enormous, but it's sunken into the dashboard
and Byton's also done a lot of work on the software side,
to make sure that it's not so distracting.
You can turn off all the widgets
that make up the user interface, for example.
And some things, like the news feed widget,
won't update while you're driving.
You also can't watch video while you're driving,
which is probably a good thing.
In fact the thing that I probably
found more distracting than anything,
is the screen on the center of the wheel.
It was a little bright in the pre-production prototype
and I'm sure you'd be able to turn that brightness down
in the final version, but even if that's the case,
it's just right there in front of your vision.
There is another screen, coming off of the center console,
but I never really noticed that.
The weirdest thing about this whole experience
is that we've just never had this kind of experience before,
in a car.
So it's hard to really get a sense of how all of this
is gonna play out, 'cause there's just so much going on
in this interior, in a way that no other car
has ever thrown at a driver.
That it really is going to take this car
getting into the hands of people,
before we understand what kind of impact
all this technology is gonna have on people.
The whole pitch that Byton is trying to make
is that this technology will gain even more value,
if and when it's able to come up
with partially self driving technology
or fully self driving technology.
But that's a long way off,
so in the meantime, Byton's gonna have to do
a lot of work, as this car comes to market
later this year, in convincing people, and honestly,
just teaching them how to use this car, the right way.
And the screen isn't the only thing
that Byton's trying to sell as a new idea.
They're also talking about doing a lot
of health data integration, collecting a lot
of information about the driver,
and using advanced technologies like facial recognition.
A lot of stuff that people
are actually kind of wary about now.
So in that sense, trying to sell people on the idea
of a giant screen in the car,
doesn't actually seem like that crazy of an idea.
And Byton's not the only one trying to convince people
of this idea.
A lot of automakers, both start ups and traditional OEMs,
are also moving in this direction of bigger screens.
And so in a couple years' time,
it's not just going to be up to Byton
to answer the question of whether or not
we should have big screens in cars.
It's gonna be up to, basically all of us.
To make sure that you can turn off
some of the elephant.
Elephant (laughing).
Oh it is CES day two.
Hey everybody, thanks for watching.
If you wanna see more weird, electric cars,
and everything else that we've seen here
at the Consumer Electronics Show,
go to YouTube.com/TheVerge and click subscribe.