Didi Kuaidi, China's leading car-hailing services provider, announced Tuesday two new ride-sharing services in major cities and plans to expand it to more cities by early 2016.
At a conference focused on future strategies, Didi launched Express Pool, the latest addition to its Didi Express business, which would be available in over 20 cities, including Beijing, Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province and Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province, according to a statement the company sent to the Global Times on Tuesday.
Express Pool would allow passengers to input trip origins and destinations and the system would then calculate an estimated fare and match the requests with other riders going the same route, Didi said.
The company said the new services attracted 6.5 million requests in six cities, including Beijing and Chengdu, during a one-month trial period.
It also mentioned that 950,000 requests for Express Pool were made in just a week in Chengdu, where the daily average equals the total number of shared rides in New York City.
Didi also launched a cross-city national ride-sharing service, Intercity Hitch, which allows passengers and drivers to book and accept rides across different cities for a two-month period around the Chinese New Year, which will fall in early February 2016.
In addition, Didi announced an expansion plan that would bring its private-car business to 400 cities by February.
According to its statement on Tuesday, the car-hailing services provider has entered 259 cities since its launch in November 2014.
