Volkswagen may help develop self-driving cars for DiDi Chuxing, China’s main service for ride-sharing. The company also works with artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology, two things which for the most part go hand-in-hand. While there weren’t a whole lot of details just yet on how or when Volkswagen would start to co-develop self-driving vehicles for the ride-sharing company, the agreement does include more than just co-developing self-driving cars. According to the report Volkswagen will also help manage vehicles for DiDi’s ride-sharing fleet, in total about 100,000, at least in the beginning as the number of cars that Volkswagen will manage is expected to grow.
The cars that DiDi will have Volkswagen manage will be from various manufacturers including Volkswagen Group’s own lineup of brands. An estimated two-thirds of the initial 100,000 will be from Volkswagen group, which could also grow as the number of cars managed by Volkswagen grows throughout the partnership. As of right the deal is not technically official but it is expected to be signed sometime next month, though no time frame was given at the moment. DiDi already commands a rather large fleet of vehicles that it operates throughout China but it’s aiming to expand on that, and will reportedly do so with Volkswagen’s help as the German auto group will join with DiDi to help buy some new vehicles specifically for the purpose of growing its fleet.
For Volkswagen’s part, DiDi will be sharing a wealth of collected data that it gathers from customers who use its ride-sharing services throughout the country, which is said to be a daily total of around 3 million, though it was not stated that Volkswagen would get access to all of that data, nor was it mentioned exactly how much data DiDi would be sharing. With this data though, Volkswagen plans to use it to help them make more well-informed decisions on improving business.