China’s ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing will launch a robotaxi service in Shanghai “very soon,” company vice president and chief technology officer Tiger Qie said at a CNBC event in Guangzhou.
Once launched, users will be able to hail self-driving vehicles through the Didi app, Qie said. In August, Didi said that the pilot program will deploy 30 different models of L4 autonomous vehicles, which are cars that can achieve fully autonomous driving but might require human intervention in some circumstances.
Didi is not the first to launch robotaxi services in China. In September, Baidu launched a fleet of 45 self-driving taxis in Changsha. Pony.ai and WeRide, two autonomous driving startups based in Guangzhou, have also rolled out pilot robotaxi services near their campuses.