Co-founder of Hooniverse Tim Odell lives in Fremont, California. While walking through his neighborhood, he noticed something a bit off in one of the driveways. There sits not one but two Byton K-Byte prototypes. What the hell is going on here?

Byton was a Chinese company headquartered in Nanjing, China. It was started by former executives from BMW and Nissan with the goal of creating electric vehicles on a large scale. Lots of money was spent on a factory. Investors bought in. Two prototype models, the K-Byte sedan and M-Byte SUV, were produced. And then… one of the co-founders left, saying that the Chinese government was interfering too much. Then COVID hit, supply chains dried up, and money wasn’t flowing like it was before.

The company went bankrupt in 2021.

So what the hell is a pair of K-Byte prototypes doing in a driveway in California? If I had to guess, I’d assume that someone used to work for the company via its North American office, which was in Santa Clara, California. Or, someone who works for Tesla has the prototypes to see what Byton was up to if it has any autonomous tech baked into it. Probably the former thought, though, if I had to make a formal guess. Either way, it’s pretty wild to see not one but two of these hanging out in a random driveway.