- Industry insiders attribute the disruption to a safety self-check mechanism, echoing a similar stalling incident involving Google's Waymo in the US last year.
- Apollo Go robotaxis have resumed operations in Wuhan following the incident.
Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service, Apollo Go, suffered a mass paralysis for its robotaxis in a central Chinese city in a rare case for the industry.
Multiple Apollo Go robotaxis suddenly stalled on roads in Wuhan, Hubei province, on the night of March 31, leaving some passengers stranded on busy elevated highways, according to local media reports.
A preliminary investigation showed the rare paralysis was caused by a system failure, Wuhan traffic police authorities said in a statement released earlier today.
Police began receiving multiple emergency calls around 9 pm on March 31 and subsequently rushed to the scene. All passengers safely disembarked with no injuries reported.
Apollo Go customer service representatives told local media the driving system abnormality was caused by network issues, though Baidu has yet to release an official statement.
The stalling of Apollo Go vehicles was likely due to unexpected circumstances that triggered a safety self-check mechanism, The Paper reported Wednesday, citing industry insiders.
This is a proactive strategy by the system to ensure safety, and similar situations are not uncommon in the development of the global autonomous driving industry, the insiders said.
In December 2025, Google's Waymo driverless cars stalled in San Francisco, triggering a "minimal risk condition" strategy after a power outage caused traffic lights to fail.
The stalling issue of Apollo Go vehicles in Wuhan has been resolved and operations have resumed, the report noted.
Baidu ventured into autonomous driving technology in 2013, making it one of the earliest Chinese companies to enter the field.
As of February 2026, Apollo Go's services have been deployed in 26 cities globally, with cumulative orders exceeding 20 million, according to Baidu's earnings report released in February.
Apollo Go provided 3.4 million fully driverless ride-hailing orders in the fourth quarter of last year, surging more than 200% from the same period a year earlier.
Just yesterday, Apollo Go announced the launch of fully driverless commercial operations in Dubai, after its operations in the UAE were briefly suspended last month due to regional conflicts.
