DiDi will be one of the frontrunners in autonomous vehicle technology development says Henry Liu, VP and Chief Scientist for DiDi Smart Transportation Initiatives. Liu says DiDi is unique in that it is not just an Internet company and not just an AI company but also is a transportation company.

The CEO of DiDi has long had a high-level focus on autonomous driving technology. “Autonomous driving and artificial intelligence are the future of mobility,” noted Cheng Wei, Founder, and CEO of DiDi. “Vehicles might be the first generation of robots with massive AI technology application.”

Henry Liu, VP and Chief Scientist for DiDi Smart Transportation Initiatives, discussed DiDi’s extensive focus on autonomous vehicles in an interview on CNBC International:

We Are a Frontrunner in Autonomous Vehicle Technology

We have developed this autonomous vehicle technology roughly three years ago and we have development teams in both the US as well as China. We have 40 autonomous vehicles being encrypted with our sensors and we have licenses in both Mountain View, California as well as Beijing, China. We are on our way to developing autonomous vehicles and we also think we will be one of the frontrunners in terms of autonomous vehicle technology development.

DiDi Has a Lot of Advantages in Autonomous Vehicle Development

We’ll start with small areas in terms of testing. DiDi has a lot of advantages in autonomous vehicle development because we have this transportation network and we know where the origin and the destination is and we know if this area is suitable for autonomous vehicle operation as well. If it’s suitable we can send an autonomous vehicle to serve for this trip or otherwise we can send a human-driven vehicle.

An Internet Company, AI Company, and Transportation Company

We are not only an Internet company and we’re not only an AI company, but we also are a transportation company which runs for people from origin to destination. That’s a lot of responsibility and we need to make this safely and efficiently. As a service provider, we utilize our technology conscientiously while we use this AI technology. We also cooperate with the government because our service actually complements public transportation systems.