Netease technology news on May 29, Didi travel announced that its automatic driving company has completed the first round of financing of more than 500 million US dollars, in order to increase investment in research and development testing, deepen industrial cooperation, promote the development of automatic driving manned applications in specific areas at home and abroad, and further improve travel safety and efficiency.

In 2016, Didi began to put into the R & D test of automatic driving. In August 2019, Didi upgraded its automatic driving department to a company. This is the first time for didi auto driving company to raise external financing after its establishment. This round of investment is led by Softbank vision fund phase 2.

After receiving financial support, Didi will increase investment in automatic driving, vehicle road coordination and related AI technologies, explore regional landing, and help local "new infrastructure" development. At the same time, Didi said, it will further deepen cooperation with upstream and downstream industries of automobile, accelerate the process of automatic driving and mass production, and promote the reform of global automobile and transportation industry.

In addition to the self built test team, the automatic driving company uses the massive real travel data accumulated by didi platform for simulation test, so as to break through the bottleneck of field test data volume, improve research and development efficiency, and speed up algorithm iteration. At the same time, the company is exploring the safety operation experience and offline management ability of didi in car hailing, which are gradually applied to the future automatic driving test operation.

Didi has obtained the qualification of road test in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and California, and obtained the first batch of license plates of "intelligent Internet vehicle demonstration application" in Shanghai, which can carry out manned test. Didi auto driving company is working with Didi's Xiaoju car suit and didi finance to explore the overall solution for future travel, including the establishment of intelligent charging piles, team maintenance, insurance and other projects. (Peng Lihui)

Source: Netease Technology Report