China’s DiDi Chuxing, NEVS Team Up on Autonomous Ride-Share EVs

China’s National Electric Vehicle Sweden AB (NEVS) has signed a strategic agreement with ride-hailing giant DiDi Chuxing to cooperate on self-driving electric taxis.

The partnership will start with the NEVS 9-3 electric sedan, which the carmaker unveiled this summer. The cars are based on the former Saab Automobile AB’s 9-3 sport sedan, which went out of production five years ago.

NEVS bought the assets of Saab in 2012 after former owner Spyker Cars NV filed for bankruptcy. NEVS is backed by several Chinese conglomerates, including Alibaba, Baidu, NME Holdings, Tianjin Bin Hai Hi-tech (THT), Tencent and State Research Information Technology.

In January the Chinese government approved NEVS’ application to start EV production at its plant in Tianjin. This spring the carmaker launched a program with THT to offer car-sharing and ride-hailing solutions in the Tianjin city.

DiDi says more than 20 million people use the company’s various mobility services per day in China. The company also says its platforms generate 70 terabytes of data and process more than 9 billion routing requests daily. Didi predicts that there will be more than 1 million EVs using its mobility platforms in 2020.