China's Didi buys Brazil's 99 in new Uber challenge; BlackBerry, Baidu in autonomous vehicle deal

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing said on Thursday it had bought Brazil's 99 Taxis, opening another front in the Beijing-based company's global battle with Uber.

Didi, which claims to be the world's leading mobile transportation platform with more than 450 million users, had become a strategic investor in 99 Taxis last January.

It now will acquire the company outright along with its 14 million registered users in Brazil as it pushes into the growing Latin American car-share market.

"Globalisation is a top strategic priority for Didi," founder and CEO Cheng Wei said in a statement announcing the purchase, adding that the company would continue to seek "diversified international operations and partnerships."

Didi said it has now entered into partnerships with seven "major international players" serving more than 1,000 cities worldwide, including Southeast Asia's Grab, India's Ola, US-based Lyft, and Europe's Taxify.

Didi and Uber have been waging a global turf war since Didi bought the US-based company's China operations last year.

The statement from Didi called the 99 Taxis acquisition a "significant step next step of Didi's global strategy".

Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are Uber's top two busiest cities in the world as ranked by the number of trips that take place there, Bloomberg News reported.

Didi last year became Asia's most valuable start-up company.

Two weeks ago it announced an additional $4 billion was raised in a new funding round. Investors included Japanese telecoms giant Softbank and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Capital, sources close to the matter told AFP at the time.

The sources said the latest round raises Didi's valuation to $56 billion.

The investment will be used to fuel Didi's global expansion and support new developments in artificial intelligence and new-energy vehicles, the company said.

Didi claims to handle up to 25 million rides per day.

BlackBerry, Baidu announce autonomous vehicle partnership
Montreal (AFP) Jan 3, 2018 - Canadian telecommunications software company BlackBerry and China's web giant Baidu on Wednesday announced a partnership for autonomous and connected vehicles.

"The two companies will collaborate to accelerate the deployment of connected and autonomous vehicle technology for automotive OEMs and suppliers worldwide," they said in a statement.

BlackBerry's operating system will be "the foundation for Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving open platform," the statement said.

In September, Baidu announced a $1.5 billion investment in autonomous driving projects over the next three years, as it seeks to diversify its portfolio and compete with rivals such as Google.

BlackBerry, after abandoning the manufacture of its once-popular smartphones, has refocused its core business on cybersecurity software and services.

Tesla again delays target for ramping up Model 3 output
New York (AFP) Jan 3, 2018
Tesla Motors on Wednesday again pushed back the time-frame for ramping up production of the closely-watched Model 3 vehicle, its sedan aimed at the middle market. The electric carmaker said it now expects to hit a Model 3 production level of 5,000 per week by the end of the second quarter instead of at the end of the first quarter. The first-quarter target was itself a prolongation of a ... read more

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