Uber makes a huge new push in China, launches in 15 more cities

Uber revealed today that it’ll launch in 15 new cities in China in the next few weeks ahead of Chinese New Year. It’s the first major step in Uber’s plan to cover at least 100 Chinese cities by the end of this year.

With this new rollout, Uber will be available in 37 cities in mainland China (update: corrected that figure. The article originally said 35). Plus there’s Hong Kong and Macau.

2016 will be our ‘Year of Growth’.

All the new launches before Chinese New Year (which this year starts on February 8) will happen in Sichuan province, the place famous for pandas and spicy food. The province is home to about 87 million people. The state capital, Chengdu, is Uber’s number one global city, the startup said back in September. Chengdu has 14 million residents, compared with New York’s 8 million.

Sichuan is now the “largest provincial market for Uber in China,” the company said today in a statement, with the car-hailing service soon covering every single major city in the panda province.

“2015 was Uber China’s ‘Year of Localization’ and 2016 will be our ‘Year of Growth,’” said Zhen Liu, Uber China’s head of strategy this morning. “We’re delighted to be making an exciting start to the year with this rapid ramp-up in Sichuan,” she added while re-affirming CEO Travis Kalanick’s 100-city target for the country.

Uber is up against homegrown rival Didi Kuaidi, which offers taxis as well as private car options that compete directly with UberX and UberBlack.

Pick-up points

Playing up to the panda theme, Uber today showed off panda-themed UberSTATIONs at key points across Chengdu, such as malls and popular restaurants. “The UberSTATIONS are locations designated by Uber and clearly marked with on-site signage where Uber riders and drivers can find each other easily, especially in areas that the rider may not be familiar with or in locations with complicated traffic patterns,” explained the firm.

These UberSTATIONs will show up in Baidu Maps, China’s most popular mapping app. Baidu is an investor in Uber.

The news comes days after Uber’s China unit revealed it had secured US$2 billion in funding from Chinese investors during its series B round.