Byton unveils interior with insane screen real-estate for its production electric car

BYTON, a well-funded China-based EV startup, is trying to bring to market its first all-electric vehicle this year and it has now unveiled the first images of the interior of the production version of the car.

They are sticking to the crazy amount of screen real-estate unveiled in the original prototype.

As we previously reported, Byton was found by a bunch of executives from Tesla, BMW, and Nissan. It has several Chinese investors, including Tencent Holdings, which is now also an important investor in Tesla.

Last year, they secured $500 million in funding to bring their electric vehicles to market.

Those vehicles are the K-Byte, an all-electric and autonomous sedan, and the M-Byte, an all-electric and autonomous SUV.

One of the most distinctive features of BYTON’s vehicles, at least based on the prototypes, is the insanely large 49″ by 10″ screen on the dashboard.

Last week, the company unveiled the first images of the production version of the M-Byte and they confirmed that they are sticking to the giant screen:

As you can see, it’s not even the only screen in the vehicle. There’s also a large touchscreen on the steering wheel and another one on the center console.

Aside from the screens, BYTON is promising some very interesting specs for a relatively low starting price of $45,000: a 71 kWh battery pack for 250 miles of range, 30 minutes fast-charging to 80%, 200 kW rear-wheel drive motor, and more.

They are also offering higher-end versions of the two vehicles with a 95 kWh battery pack for 325 miles of range and a dual motor all-wheel-drive system.

We got a test ride in an early prototype of the M-Byte last year.

Electrek’s Take

I can imagine that this setup would be awesome in a self-driving car, but Byton is not there yet and when driving, I don’t see how this doesn’t get at least a little distracting.

In the test ride that we got, it was quite awful, but they were running a demo on a loop on those screens, which didn’t make for a great experience.

I think they made a mistake to first introduce people to their user interface with this very early demo.

The setup would be more enjoyable with some more complete and useful user features utilizing that insane screen real estate.

Let’s see.