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System Malfunction Freezes More Than 100 Baidu Robotaxis in Wuhan

The mass outage exposed failures in emergency support across a city-scale driverless fleet.

Overview

  • Wuhan traffic police said a system malfunction stopped more than 100 Apollo Go cabs across the city on Tuesday night.
  • Passengers were stuck for up to two hours as some SOS buttons showed errors and in-car calls dropped before help arrived.
  • Stopped vehicles blocked lanes on ring roads and highways, causing heavy delays and several reported rear-end crashes with no serious injuries.
  • Baidu has not provided a technical explanation as investigations continue, and Wuhan hosts its largest deployment with more than 1,000 driverless cars.
  • The breakdown raises questions about network dependence and fallback design as China finalizes insurance rules and Baidu pushes global rollouts in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.