At the recent Didi Open Day - the third event of the "Driver Experience Supervisor Review Meeting", representatives from drivers, media, experts and scholars and other walks of life focused on "reporting on improvement of driver feedback issues" and "collecting opinions on commission issues" for discussion.
At this year's first and second review meetings, representatives from all walks of life discussed and made suggestions focusing on issues such as "station cheating management" and "cross-city order return fees." At the review meeting, Didi simultaneously reported on the improvement of these two issues and solicited opinions. In terms of site cheating management, Didi internally collaborated with multiple departments to set up a site cheating management project, and quickly reinforced and repaired the discovered system rule loopholes. Didi has set up a special team to crack down on illegal industry since 2015. In 2016, it cooperated with the Beijing police to uncover the country's first illegal profit-making case of manufacturing and selling online ride-hailing cheating devices. Since then, Didi has continued to cooperate with the police to crack down on illegal industry. In 2025 alone, Didi cooperated with the police in many places to file criminal cases. In 10 cases, 14 criminal gangs were eliminated, involving dozens of cheating software installation packages and external devices targeting Didi and other online ride-hailing platforms. 43 suspects were arrested, including developers of cheating devices for online ride-hailing orders, sales agents and some cheating drivers with bad behavior. At present, Didi has piloted upgrading the order-taking rules in some cities. For example, drivers must stay on the order-taking page when taking orders at the station, strengthen facial verification, etc., to maintain the fairness of each driver's order-taking.
Regarding the return fee for cross-city orders, the platform currently has two approaches. One is the return fee for cross-city orders from Shenzhen to Zhongshan, and the other is to allow drivers to negotiate the amount with passengers before the trip begins, but it must not be higher than the outbound expressway fee. However, offline consultation meetings for drivers and passengers have problems such as irregular communication or unclear prices. In order to better match the demand and solve the experience pain points of both drivers and passengers, the platform made pilot improvements based on the feedback from drivers and passengers. It launched an in-app price negotiation method for return fares, optimized the pricing mechanism and negotiation model, and gave the right of choice to passengers and drivers, making the negotiation process of return fares clear and transparent. The platform will display the highway tolls of the route to passengers as a reference for return fares, and display three levels of amounts, which passengers can choose to add. All of this fee will be given to the driver to cover the cost of the return trip, and the driver can also choose whether to accept the order. The pilot program will be launched in Jiangmen, Zhaoqing, Kaifeng, Quanzhou, and Jinan in the near future. It will be further improved based on the trial situation and gradually promoted nationwide.
Regarding the issue of commission, which is a common concern among all walks of life and driver masters, the participating guests also shared their actual feelings and actual measurements. Master Sun, a Didi driver from Xi'an, and Master Zhang, a Didi driver from Shenzhen, respectively showed their bills for August, which showed commission ratios of 6.9% and 18% respectively.
Relevant Didi staff also answered questions and answers openly to the driver masters, sharing topics such as the calculation of commissions, the supply and demand logic behind the high or low commissions, and the use of commissions. As a bilateral trading platform, the platform charges drivers and passengers independently, and issues driver rewards and passenger discounts in addition to basic billing, thereby better adapting to changes in supply and demand patterns, satisfying the user value of passengers and drivers, and promoting more orders. In areas with hot demand for ride-hailing, the platform provides more incentives to drivers to encourage them to take orders. In areas with low demand, the platform provides more discounts to passengers to attract more orders. The subsidy affects the final amount paid by passengers and the income received by drivers, and also affects the calculated commission.
In 2024, Didi will charge an average of 14% for all orders. The relevant person in charge of Didi said that commission is not equal to profit. Most of the funds from the platform commission are fed back to drivers through subsidies, and are also used for various expenses including platform system maintenance, payment and settlement security, customer service, insurance and claims, compliance and taxes. Therefore, commission is not simply used to make platform profits, but is used to maintain the entire service ecosystem.
Drivers, media, and expert representatives also put forward many constructive opinions. For example, it can strengthen the visual display of bills to make them more concise and concise; when encountering orders with negative commissions or no commissions, the platform can perform voice broadcasts to deepen the driver's perception; for example, in the bill, it can automatically help drivers calculate and display the total amount of driver income last month and the corresponding total amount actually paid by passengers; for example, in terms of driver income, we hope that the platform can implement the reduction of commissions so that drivers can truly feel the benefits, etc.
Cao Le, CTO of Didi Ride Hailing, said, "We hope to continue to hold the Didi Open Day review meeting and continue to help drivers solve problems. Openness, listening, and progress are our original intentions, and we also ask everyone to continue to supervise, criticize, and help us improve."