Traditionally, taxis find passengers by simply driving along, and this old-fashioned way of operating usually has an idling rate of over 40%, leading to a series of problems, such as low driver income, high fuel consumption, and serious urban pollutions. The Taxi Smart Assistant is the industry's first in-vehicle product equipped with intelligent cruising functions which, with taxi equipment linkage, can help drivers operate more efficiently and increase their revenue.

Alipay, together with Gaode Map, provides an intelligent cruising solution facilitated by traffic data, helping taxis to accurately determine fare hotspots and optimised routes. And by using the intelligent assistant to guide drivers to take orders, the efficiency of taxi pick-ups can be significantly improved, solving a long standing problem in the industry: the difficulty in picking up orders for taxi drivers and getting a taxi for passengers. The assistant can also provide drivers with additional services, such as a more convenient way to collection payments, covid prevention and control measures, voice assisted inquiring system, etc.

In the small batch stage, it will be officially launched in March 2023. It has already negotiated a cooperation intention with the brand taxi company. It is expected that the first batch of sales will be 20,000 units in 2023.

The Taxi Smart Assistant provides intelligent travel services for drivers and passengers which transform the taxi industry from the traditional mode of operation into the modern digital mode. In doing so, drivers’ income can be increased while improving working motivation for drivers and efficiency for getting a taxi for passengers, and the product’s other advantages will result in saving fuel and energy, and alleviating urban traffic problems.

The Alipay team has 30 people participating in this project, and they are respectively responsible for product market planning, product definition, hardware design, structure development, procurement cost evaluation, supply chain management, business promotion and sales, etc.; and in-depth cooperation with Ruiming Technology, a leading enterprise in the industry.

It is the first in-vehicle product to help taxis solve their operation problems. When the cruising function is turned on, the intelligent assistant can identify the idling or busy status of taxis and quickly generate cruising solutions based on the current location and nearby hot zones. It also links with the meter in the car, reads the amount generated on the meter and automatically generates a QR code for payments, which is safer and more efficient than traditional manual system. Its multimodal interaction allows drivers and passengers to have a smarter experience and solves the safety problems associated with the single touch screen system while driving.

From product approval to listing, a total of 10 months of software and hardware research and development and production testing have been experienced. The research and development investment of each partner exceeds 15 million RMB.

The cruising function of the smart assistant helps drivers to receive orders through travel big data. After the trial, it was well received by drivers and helped them find more suitable routes and increase the order acceptance rate. At the same time, the number of Alipay payments has also been increased, and the commercialization of Alipay has also been achieved through the content promotion of the smart assistant.