As user growth levels off, mobility firms are turning to phones, wearables and smart glasses to connect passengers directly with vehicles and reshape the next phase of transport.
What was once a science-fiction vision is moving into ordinary transport flows in China, where users can now begin a journey by speaking to a phone, a watch or a pair of smart glasses rather than opening a ride-hailing app. According to the lead report, the shift matters because China’s online car-hailing market is no longer expanding at the pace it once did: user numbers have levelled off, growth has slowed, and the industry is now looking for a new engine. The emerging answer is AI-agent-led travel, in which the request is captured by a device-level assistant and passed through to a mobility service without the passenger manually navigating a platform.
Caocao Mobility has emerged as one of the clearest examples of that transition. In September 2026, the company said its AI ride-hailing service was integrated with HONOR YOYO and OPPO Breeno Next, allowing users to make a request by voice while the system identifies pickup and drop-off points, matches mobility supply, selects a vehicle and route, and places the booking. The same month, Caocao announced a partnership with Qwen AI Glasses, extending the service to hands-free, near-eye interaction. Taken together, those moves suggest that the competitive frontline in ride-hailing is shifting away from the app icon and towards the operating layer built into consumer hardware.
That change has wider industrial consequences. The lead report argues that AI travel is becoming a full chain rather than a loose collection of experiments: front-end assistants receive demand, middle-layer platforms manage allocation and fulfilment, and autonomous vehicles complete the trip in the physical world. Caocao itself says on its global website that it is building a three-in-one ecosystem combining purpose-built vehicles, intelligent driving and intelligent operations. That model is significant because it blurs the boundary between conventional ride-hailing groups and self-driving specialists, each of which is now trying to control both the demand side and the supply side of the trip.
The pressure to build that closed loop is evident in the wider market. The lead report says China’s online car-hailing market reached 4.119 trillion yuan in 2025, but growth had already slowed, while the number of users held steady at 539 million. At the same time, the main operators and autonomous driving firms are moving towards integration. The report highlights DiDi’s work with GAC Aion on a Robotaxi model, Pony.ai’s cooperation with Ruqi Travel, and WeRide’s connections to both WeChat travel services and, overseas, platforms such as Uber. The direction of travel is clear: whoever controls the interface to the passenger and the vehicle supply underneath it may ultimately control the industry’s next phase.
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