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Didi Chuxing China’s ‘Uber’ Launches A Brand New Fleet of Self-Driving Taxis

automobile taxi
Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/automobile-automotive-blur-car-1845650/

Uber’s ultimate competitor in China is going to level-up their game by offering self-driving taxis.

Didi Chuxing, the Chinese ride-sharing titan has recently introduced their intension to launch a new line of freestanding taxis. As the pioneer of massive self-driving taxi service in China, Didi wishes to bring its Level 4 self-driving cars in Shanghai (Jiading District). CEO and founder of Didi Chuxing, Cheng Wei, proclaimed the latest feature of their service at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai last Friday. The government in Shanghai already gave their approval permit for testing the AV fleet last Wednesday, so during the Conference, the company excitedly demonstrated the self-driving taxis.

Cheng believed that you can only see the true value of technology when it offers convenience to the people. With regards to this, they want the ordinary citizens to enjoy massive, shared auto-driving taxis towards safe, sustainable, and efficient transportation in the years to come.

Self-driving taxis

The vehicles will nevertheless be driven by a human and it will be available in 30 various car models featuring a Level 4 autonomy. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Level 4 autonomy simply denotes a full self-driving vehicle in several scenarios but not all. It is the highest achievement made in publicly available cars. Travel times will drastically multiply and exceed 10 kilometers. The exact date of the launch is still unidentified until today.

With this kind of innovation, Didi could be the first-ever business enterprise to release a massive autonomous-taxi service in China. It is an ambitious plan that no one ever dared to make, except for Didi who always hailed in the industry. However, Didi is not the first company to introduce plans of launching a self-driving taxi service in China, Baidu also intends to do the exact same type of service in Changsta later this 2019. Pony.ai has attempts of launching the exact kind of service in the Nansha District.

Self-Driving Taxis
Image Source: https://pixabay.com/photos/taxi-cab-traffic-cab-new-york-381233/

Self-driving taxis all over the globe

Over the past years, plans for launching self-driving taxi services has been introduced in different parts of the world, from self-driving bus in Helsinki, to Dubai up to Japan. In fact, in the United States, Uber announced its latest self-driving car last June. They are not the only company who has walked the path with autonomous cars; count Waymo in and Elon Musk also has their Tesla taxi schemes.

Waymo is the autonomous car company from Google’s head company Alphabet which introduced its self-driving taxi system, Waymo One last 2018 in Phoenix. Later in March, Lyft and Waymo teamed up to deliver self-driving choices on an app. After that, Waymo announced its further plans to expand self-driving cars in other parts of the world – maybe in Japan and France – together with Nissan and Renault. But Didi has nothing to worry about because China will not be part of its possible worldwide expansion.

Now, people are still waiting for the in-depth explanation as to how Didi’s self-driving cars will soon go about the busting streets of Shanghai.