For US travelers, is Lyft almost as good as Didi?

Lookout antivirus triggered Didi as spyware, so I'd rather not keep it on my phone.

Agree that the calling adds confusion and some uncertainty, but FWIW, I speak no Chinese and had no trouble in either SH or BJ ignoring the call and using the Didi English-language message suggestions ("I am at my pin location, please pick me up now" eg) to communicate with drivers.

During my last visit to PVG, my first time using DiDi from the airport, a local told me that a lot of drivers meet with riders in the parking structure in between the terminals. So off I went. Sure enough when I pinged for my ride, a phone call came in from the driver. Being slightly less than useless in Putonghua, I handed the phone to a guard who walked over, noting the confused look on my face, who proceeded to explain to the driver exactly where we were. After the conversation, he pointed out that drivers like to know where in the parking structure you are and to use the parking structure locators (L2, section A19).
Five minutes later, a guy walks up with our chat open on his phone and identifies himself as the driver. We walk over to his Roewe 550 Plug-in Hybrid and he drives me to the Le Meridien. Easy Peasy.

At least for foreigners, easy destinations such as hotel, train stations and malls work best with the app. If a lot of people go there, chances are that DiDi has it in its database.

Lyft doesn't work there anymore. It used to work with DiDi until they took over Uber.

I was able to sign up using Project Fi from my desk at home (San Francisco). Funny that the confirmation text came from a 408 number...

Sorry for the late reply -- I didn't try sending/receiving as I could never get it to link up with Didi which was my main need. My local friend ended up creating a whole new WeChat (and Pay) account for me to use instead...

I signed up for Didi from the US, and used a US debit card to sign up, in October. This is on their English-language app, which worked really well in SH and BJ in October.

Thanks, as I carry both my US and my local CN phone I use Didi mostly from my China and live doing it with old fashion cash. May look to load up Didi on my US and suck the data and overhead to try for my next trip here.

I'm going to bite the bullet this year and get a local bank account to link to Alipay and go fully local this year, done with cash and US CC are useless at anything but the biggest places. China is moving far faster than US to cashless and Visa and MC should be worried, LOL

The didi driver is often a taxi driver. Taxi can be hard to get in some areas at some times of the day, so the app is still useful.

thanks. I'll download it just in case.

ETA: I just downloaded the app, saved my Citi MC info in my wallet and appear to be good to go. I was able to get a FYI quote from PVG to the HIlton and it came back at 205 yuan which translated into $32. This was for an "express" car not luxury. Uber X equivalent perhaps? Is this moreorless the same price a taxi would charge me? If so I'll take the taxi rather than worry about a driver calling me and becoming frustrated since we can't understand each other.

Will I be able to use Didi to get a car from hotel to airport having registered with a US number with the English version of the Didi app? I don't plan on using a Chinese sim... thanks in advance!

My last trip in Shenzhen, I started using Didi more frequently instead of a taxi to go from my hotel to the office. It seems to me that the younger drivers tend to notice that I am using a foreign language version and use the Didi messaging to confirm the trip. The older drivers tend to call. I think the need to call is more out of habit or just being skeptical to confirm the pickup. At my hotel I was able to hand the phone over to staff if I got a call from the Didi driver. Anyway, none of this is scientific just purely anecdotal. Typical price for an express car is a few RMB more on short trips. Definitely cheaper on longer trips. My daily trip to the office is short, I could walk it but I don't want to suffer the flop sweat in the 95% humidity.

Didi is good again now that it has competitors, but airport pickups are not fun. Just take a taxi.

I think the poster is asking about hotel to airport, in which case Didi can be useful.