China's BYD launches Xuanji smart car technology

BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese electric vehicle (EV) giant BYD on Tuesday launched its Xuanji smart car system, seeking to catch up with rivals with functions such as automated parking and voice recognition.

BYD has been hiring software engineers to beef up its technology offering.

Chairman Wang Chuanfu said at the company's Dream Day event that BYD had more than 90,000 employees in its research and development departments, and more than 4,000 of them working on smart driving.

BYD's rivals, including Tesla, Nio, Xpeng and Huawei, have also been investing in smart car technologies, seeing them as major selling points for their EVs.

(Reporting by Zhang Yan and Brenda GohEditing by Jason Neely and Mark Potter)