
Your next Didi ride may not come with a driver.
Didi Chuxing will accelerate self-driving tests with actual passengers in Shanghai and will invite users to experience driverless rides, the company’s CEO Cheng Wei said Thursday during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.
Didi has already applied artificial intelligence technologies to detect driver fatigue, decreasing traffic accidents involving Didi drivers by 15% in the first half of 2019, Cheng said.
Cheng added that the company will further invest in autonomous driving and bring self-driving technologies to daily life, eventually allowing everyday Didi users to enjoy driverless rides.
Didi Chuxing has collaborated with major carmakers — both Chinese and foreign — through what it calls the “D-Alliance,” in an attempt to integrate automobile technologies into Didi’s ecosystem.
But licenses for self-driving cars on Chinese roads are difficult to get. In July, Baidu became the first company to obtain a license to conduct T4 road tests — the highest category — for the company’s autonomous vehicles in China.
Related: Didi Makes Autonomous Driving Unit a Separate Entity