Skip to main content

DiDi and SoftBank to offer taxi-hailing service in Japan

China-based DiDi Chuxing will deploy its ride-matching app in Japan in partnership with investor SoftBank. The joint venture, DiDi Mobility Japan, intends to offer on-demand services and smart transportation to citizens and tourists in the autumn. Stephen Zhu, vice president of Didi Chuxing and CEO of DiDi Mobility Japan, says the new platform is intended to help taxi companies improve their efficiency, enhance user satisfaction and build more broad-based demand for taxi services. Through the agree
July 20, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
China-based DiDi Chuxing will deploy its ride-matching app in Japan in partnership with investor SoftBank. The joint venture, DiDi Mobility Japan, intends to offer on-demand services and smart transportation to citizens and tourists in the autumn.  


Stephen Zhu, vice president of Didi Chuxing and CEO of DiDi Mobility Japan, says the new platform is intended to help taxi companies improve their efficiency, enhance user satisfaction and build more broad-based demand for taxi services.

Through the agreement, DiDi will deliver its artificial intelligence-based transportation platform with SoftBank’s business base and advanced network infrastructure.

Additionally, the DiDi Greater China app will include new roaming features such as real-time in-app Chinese-Japanese instant message translation and local language customer support. Users from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will be able to use the app to hail taxis in their native language.

The trial will be available for riders, drivers and taxi operators in cities such as Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka and Tokyo.

Related Content

  • An innovation lab – not a burden
    June 27, 2018
    Travellers want to be able to book multimodal journeys easily – and to be informed of problems and alternatives as they go. Adam Roark might just be able to help, finds Ben Spencer. The global shift in transportation towards members of the public wanting access to multimodal journeys is rapidly changing how people pay and plan ahead. Buying tickets from a machine and dealing with the frustration of discovering your train is cancelled is a scenario commuters want to avoid through technology’s ability to
  • Denso to open automated vehicle technology centre in Tokyo
    November 1, 2018
    Denso is to open a facility at Haneda Airport in Tokyo in June 2020 to develop and test automated driving technologies. The company says the site will feature a building and proving ground for mobility systems research and development. It will also develop automated driving technology researched at its global R&D facility in Tokyo which opened in April. This office was developed to promote collaboration with Denso’s development partners which include automakers, universities, research institutes
  • When will Google wake up to MaaS gold mine?
    December 3, 2018
    Mobility services are a potential gold mine for data-hungry tech companies. That being the case, Andrew Bunn asks: what exactly happens when giants such as Google and Amazon decide to get their teeth into MaaS? There are many different perspectives on Mobility as a Service (MaaS), with many different views on what the latest and future applications of technology are going to bring to transportation infrastructure. However, there is one question that does not seem to come up at all. Up to now, MaaS-relate
  • Connected Signals improves driver safety in Florida
    September 5, 2018
    Connected Signals is providing drivers in Gainesville, Florida, with real-time predictive traffic information to let them know when traffic lights are going to change. The company says sharing the data with vehicles and drivers can improve fuel efficiency by 8-15% and reduce red-light crashes by 25%. Aggregated real-time signal information, fed through predictive algorithms, is sent to Gainesville drivers via the company’s Enlighten mobile app. The app will eventually be integrated with connected car dis