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BEIJING, August 31 (TMTPOST)— Chinese telecom giant Huawei seems to accelerate expansion of its new business ride-hailing through partnership with a Didi’s rival.
Source: Visual China
Petal Travel, Huawei’s car-hailing service platform, is in talks with T3 Mobility for full integration with the operator of ride-hailing platform, as part of efforts to expand into wider markets across China, Sina News cited people with knowledge of the matter Wednesday. With the aim to offer services in the whole country, Petal Travel intends to contact more ride-hailing companies for partnership, including T3, an operator backed by state-owned automakers such as FAW Group and Dongfeng Motor, the people said.
Petal Travel, or Petal Chuxing in Chinese, is available in limited Chinese markets including Beijing, Shenzhen and Nanjing since Huawei launched it in an event to release HarmonyOS3.0 late July. Adopting the same model as Alibaba’s Amap and Meituan’s ride-sharing app, Huawei runs the platform as an aggregator of ride-hailing services, though it has only two partners Shouqi Yueche, also known as Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur, and Shenzhou Zhuanche.
It is notable that the navigation of Petal Travel was empowered by Petal Maps, an in-built map app that Huawei in October, 2020. The app targets markets outside China and has increased its service scope to more than 28 million users in over 160 countries in less than two years.
Prior to birth of Petal Travel, the market focuses more on Huawei’s development of high-precision maps than ride-sharing, people in the industry pointed out. Petal Travel seems as a key part for Huawei build Petal Map’s ecosystem, which requires wider user base and more supporting services.
Once the partnership is settled, Huawei and T3 Mobility may not just work on ride-hailing but more businesses such as new energy vehicle (NEV) and self-driving, an insider of the industry who focuses on smart mobility told Sina. Founded in 2019, T3 now operates in 92 Chinese cities with more than 110 million registered users and over 800,000 registered drivers on its platform, the CEO Cui Dayong revealed in a key note earlier this week. 92% of vehicles registered on T3 were NEVs, according to Cui, highlighting the platform’s promotion for clean energy.
