Valeo, a French technology company that caters to the automotive industry, has formed a strategic alliance with DiDi Autonomous Driving.

Under the partnership, Valeo plans to invest in DiDi Autonomous Driving, a unit of China’s DiDi Global.

The quantity of the investment was not disclosed.

In addition, the two companies will develop advanced safety solutions for robotaxis or self-driving taxis.

Specifically, the companies will set up a research and development (R&D) team focused on developing safety systems.

This alliance aims to provide additional safety features to users by incorporating a secondary set of hardware and software, called the Automated Safety Pilot.

The solution will act as a backup system, providing redundancy in case of failures and offering safety features tailored to specific operational scenarios.

Valeo executive vice president of strategy and CTO Geoffrey Bouquot said: “Valeo has been developing leading technologies to reach and support L4 autonomous driving for many years. DiDi Autonomous Driving, with its strong focus on shared mobility, holds a leading edge in technology R&D and operational capabilities.”

Initially, the safety solution will be installed in DiDi Autonomous Driving’s L4 robotaxis.

DiDi Autonomous Driving COO Meng Xing said: “The strategic partnership with Valeo enables us to achieve major breakthroughs in the standardising and scaling of key modules of autonomous driving systems, to further improve the overall system safety of L4 Robotaxis, and to provide passengers with high-quality driverless mobility services.

“Together, we aim to accelerate the commercialisation of autonomous driving technology.”