Didi joins the self-driving taxi race
Chinese transportation apps giant Didi staged a demonstration on February 9 of its autonomous driving technology at a circuit on the outskirts of Shanghai using Chinese-made Qoros 5 vehicles fitted with technology developed at its factory in Changshu, about 80 kilometers from Shanghai.
On Sunday, company sources revealed that two of the vehicles had already been undergoing road tests for several months, meaning that Didi’s progress was much higher than believed. The company has autonomous vehicle development facilities in Mountain View, where it employs Charlie Miller, the well-known security researcher who got famous when he hacked into a Jeep in July 2015 with a journalist from Wired magazine at the wheel, but nobody had realized that the company had been carrying out tests in real traffic conditions.
What all this means is that ride-sharing companies in the world will drive the development of autonomous vehicles. Companies such as Uber, whose CEO has already announced that the company’s autonomous vehicles will be fully operational by 2019 (and by 2023 it will have flying taxis), along with Singapore-based Grab, which is aiming for 2022 at the latest, and now joined by Didi, need autonomous driving technology to justify valuations that would not be possible with the cost structure they currently have unless they eliminate drivers from the equation. These are very large companies with very powerful shareholders and not prone to speculation or make-believe, and that also have the fundamental element necessary: many millions of journeys a day to test their systems and educate their algorithms to deal with all kinds of situations.
The Waymo Uber lawsuit over technology theft ended last Friday with an out-of-court settlement giving Google 0.34% of Uber’s shares to add to the nearly $250,000 worth it already owned, underscoring the company’s impressive negotiating skills of Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO who replaced Travis Kalanick and who is carrying out a huge culture change in the company. The settlement opens a new stage in the development of autonomous driving technology, with Uber able to move forward with its Volvo XC90 without fear of being punished by the courts, while Waymo already has its Chrysler Pacifica fleets circulating without a safety driver in several US cities. There are also a number of competitors, some set up by former Waymo managers, to ensure competition.
While some skeptics are still talking about a 20-year time frame, self-driving vehicles are already here…
(En español, aquí)
