Passengers in Beijing and Guangzhou can now hail a DiDi ride that arrives without a driver. The company’s R2 robotaxi entered fully driverless service trials on August 31, bookable through the DiDi app in designated demonstration zones.
The R2, built with GAC Aion, rides on DiDi’s Level 4 stack. It carries 33 sensors feeding a triple-domain fusion computer DiDi calls the first mass-produced unit of its kind, with more than 2,000 TOPS of compute and costs 74 percent below the previous generation.
Safety claims run deep: five-star ratings under both C-NCAP and Euro NCAP, plus redundancy across algorithms, software, hardware, braking, steering, communication, and power supply. DiDi says the platform was built to Functional Safety and SOTIF requirements and passed three levels of verification.
The trial is DiDi’s strongest bid yet in China’s crowded robotaxi race, where rivals are also expanding pilot services across major cities.
