By YAN Liting
Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing unveiled a concept car, the DiDi Neuron, and its newly package freight service KargoBot Thursday.
Didi CTO, ZHANG Bo, said L4 vehicles will be mass-produced and in use within three years through ride-hailing services.
Self-driving cars are classified into six levels with L3 being the watershed between assisted driving and self-driving. L4 means being able to self-drive in most scenarios, and L5 is fully autonomous. Didi and Baidu, along with other players, want to skip straight to L4, rather than developing each level along the way.
With the latest version of the Didi app, users can hail self-driving cars in designated areas of Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Didi's first mass-produced L4 vehicle will arrive in 2025, equipped with 21 cameras, 8 LiDARs, and 6 mmWave radars. With no driver seat and no controls, the Neuron has about 50 percent more room inside than a conventional vehicle. Passengers can even lie down in the car.
In terms of commercialization, like other autonomous driving players such as Momenta and Zhixing, Didi has set its sights on the freight industry via KargoBot. The freight industry is highly compatible with autonomous driving. KargoBot uses Didi's autonomous driving platform and has been running since 2021.
The KargoBot vehicles move around in convoys with a lead vehicle and human driver followed by multiple L4 trucks. Currently, KargoBot has more than 100 autonomous driving trucks and has started trial operations between Tianjin and Inner Mongolia. Cumulative revenue has exceeded 100 million yuan.
Didi has also built the first autonomous driving service center - Huijue Port. Huijue can take orders and dispatch vehicles, as well as wash, charge, inspect and maintain them.
