DiDi’s Autonomous Driving Starts Commercial Operation in Guangzhou

On March 29th, it was announced that DiDi’s autonomous driving service has become one of the first companies to receive a qualification for intelligent networked demonstration operations in Guangzhou. Recently, it officially started accepting orders in Guangzhou and charges fees based on actual mileage and usage time, as regular taxi services.

It has been reported that since March 27th, citizens in Huadu District of Guangzhou can call autonomous driving vehicles through DiDi’s autonomous driving mini program to experience autonomous driving services and pay for the fare based on actual mileage and usage time.

Currently, the area in Huadu District that can be reached by autonomous vehicles has covered typical commercial and residential areas such as office buildings, star-rated hotels, scenic spots, schools, shopping centers, and communities.

In March 2021, with the strong support of the Guangzhou Municipal Government and Huadu District Government, DiDi Autonomous Driving landed in Guangzhou. Subsequently, in January of this year, DiDi Autonomous Driving’s XC90 model equipped with the Gemini autonomous driving platform passed safety technology testing and review and was selected for the Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Model Catalog.

With the support of the Huadu District Government, DiDi’s autonomous driving technology has been deeply involved in the construction of projects such as collaborative road infrastructure, cloud control and intelligent transportation systems platform in Huadu District, Guangzhou.

When riding in an autonomous driving vehicle, passenger safety is the most important concern. To address this, DiDi’s autonomous driving vehicle deeply integrates four aspects: high-performance sensors, on-board autonomous driving system, remote assistance system and pre-installed mass-produced car models.

Among them, the multi-sensor deep fusion algorithm technology can significantly improve the vehicle’s perception ability in Guangzhou’s characteristic real scenes such as tree shade, tunnels, rain and fog, backlighting, and mixed traffic of machines and non-machines. This enables the autonomous driving system to achieve a higher level of safety. The on-board autonomous driving backup system can provide sufficient safety response solutions in milliseconds even if the main system is unavailable under extreme scenarios.

In addition, DiDi’s autonomous driving remote escort center has also built a safety line for autonomous driving test operations. The head of DiDi’s autonomous driving operation said, “We have also designed new welcome light strips and interactive screens that can display various modes such as pedestrian courtesy and roadside parking, which can further improve communication efficiency between the vehicle and passengers.”

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DiDi’s autonomous driving system is built on high-performance roadside perception systems based on laser radar, cameras and other sensing devices deployed on the road, as well as low-latency and highly stable V2X and 5G communication technologies. The vehicles can interact with the roadside for information exchange and sharing, expanding their perception range beyond line of sight to help eliminate blind spots in autonomous driving.

DiDi said that “we will further expand its operation scope in the future and explore a mixed dispatch system for autonomous vehicles and human drivers based on DiDi’s ride-sharing scenario in Guangzhou. The dispatch mode can be determined according to road conditions, weather, and route.” In addition, DiDi’s autonomous driving technology will continue to work with Guangzhou to accelerate the opening of autonomous driving areas in the air-rail intermodal transportation zone.