Multiple Baidu Robotaxis Stranded By Technical Glitch In Wuhan, Leaving Passengers Trapped And Triggering Collisions
A yet-unidentified technical glitch left a fleet of autonomous robotaxis operated by Chinese tech giant Baidu stranded in active traffic this Tuesday, trapping some riders inside their vehicles for more than an hour.
The incident unfolded in Wuhan, a major central Chinese city where Baidu has deployed hundreds of its Apollo Go self-driving taxi services. Users on Chinese social media were the first to report witnessing the vehicles abruptly malfunction and shut down mid-operation. Images and video clips circulated online confirm multiple Baidu robotaxis were left stopped along busy highways, most often blocking the high-speed fast lane.
A Wuhan-based college student, who only agreed to share her surname He with WIRED to protect her privacy, recounted being trapped in a Baidu robotaxi with two friends for roughly 90 minutes on Tuesday. She explained the vehicle malfunctioned and came to an unexpected stop four to five times throughout their trip, before finally locking up permanently near an intersection in eastern Wuhan. Fortunately, the location was a low-traffic area, so the group faced no immediate safety risks. A photo He shared with WIRED shows the in-vehicle display instructed passengers to stay buckled in their seats and wait for a company representative to arrive “in five minutes.”
He told WIRED it took her roughly 30 minutes just to connect with a Baidu customer service representative over the phone. “They kept saying they would report the issue to their superior, but they never explained what caused the outage, or gave us any update on how long we’d have to wait for staff to arrive,” she said. When no technician ever showed up, the three passengers opted to exit the vehicle on their own after waiting an additional hour — they found the car doors were not locked.
Other stranded passengers took to Chinese social media to share similar complaints about being unable to reach Baidu’s support team. One user posted a clip of her malfunctioning SOS button to RedNote alongside her account of the experience. “I tried every possible method to get help listed in the app, but no one picked up the phone, and when I pressed the SOS button it just told me the service was unavailable. So what is the SOS even for?” she wrote. She explained she had to force the car door open to exit, after all traffic behind her robotaxi came to a complete standstill. “Apollo Go, you really owe me an apology,” she added.
Baidu did not issue an immediate response to requests for comment on the incident. Wuhan local police released a statement around midnight local time, noting the outage was “likely caused by a system malfunction,” but added the incident remains under active investigation. Police confirmed no injuries were reported, and all passengers have since exited the affected vehicles. It remains unclear exactly how many of Baidu’s robotaxis were impacted by the glitch.
A dashcam recording uploaded to RedNote shows a driver passing 16 stationary Apollo Go vehicles parked along the roadway over the course of a 90-minute window. The clip captures multiple instances where the driver only avoided colliding with the stranded robotaxis by slamming on the brakes or switching lanes at the very last second.
Not all drivers were able to avoid collisions with the stopped vehicles. In another RedNote post, a driver claimed he crashed into one of the non-operational Baidu robotaxis. He wrote that he was traveling at more than 40 miles per hour along a highway, when the car directly ahead of him abruptly swerved to miss the stopped robotaxi. He did not have enough time to react, and hit the autonomous vehicle. Photos of his orange SUV being towed away show the vehicle’s front right fender was fully torn off, with other major damage to the car’s front end.
Social media photos and clips confirm there were at least two more collisions linked to the stranded robotaxis that same day. A Wuhan-based RedNote user confirmed to WIRED she drove past the scene of a rear-end crash between a white minivan and a parked Baidu robotaxi. The back end of the autonomous vehicle suffered heavy damage, but the two people standing at the scene appeared uninjured, she said. She added that she counted roughly a dozen more stationary robotaxis parked along the same stretch of road.
Baidu is one of China’s leading developers of autonomous driving technology. The company has launched commercial robotaxi services in more than a dozen Chinese cities to date, and has recently begun expanding its international footprint to locations including Seoul, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. Back in February, Baidu announced it had completed more than 20 million autonomous rides, covering a total distance of over 300 million kilometers (around 186 million miles).
Wuhan has emerged as one of the most progressive Chinese cities when it comes to permitting Baidu’s fully autonomous vehicles on public roads. The city allows the robotaxis to operate on public highways and run regular routes to the city’s main airport.
