Passengers stranded in moving traffic after robotaxi outage in China's Wuhan

More than 100 Baidu-operated robotaxis stopped in moving traffic in Wuhan on Wednesday evening after a “system malfunction,” leaving some passengers stranded on an elevated ring road, police and media reports said. The preliminary investigation by Wuhan police, who did not elaborate on the cause, found that the shutdown affected over 100 vehicles; no injuries were reported.

"Driving system malfunction. Staff are expected to arrive in 5 minutes," read an on-board instruction shown to passengers when at least one vehicle halted, according to Chinese media reports.

Reports said calls about taxis stopping began around 9 p.m. Some passengers managed to exit their vehicles after doors could be opened; others remained inside because their taxis had stopped in a middle lane of an elevated ring road where other vehicles were passing on both sides. One passenger told Chinese media the robotaxi stopped after turning a corner and, after waiting without staff arriving, pushed an SOS button and was told staff were on their way. Multiple people were later rescued, local media reported.

• Operator: Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi service, which runs hundreds of vehicles in Wuhan as part of an early pilot project.
• Scale of stoppage: Police described the incident as involving "more than 100 robotaxis."
• Timing: Reports and calls to authorities began around 9 p.m. local time.
• Injuries: None reported.

Baidu did not have any immediate comment on the incident, according to the Associated Press account published by NBC News. Police noted the stoppage resulted from a "system malfunction" but did not provide technical details about the failure or whether it was caused by software, communications, power or a combination of factors.

Industry observers noted the Wuhan event is the first reported mass shutdown of robotaxis in China. The incident follows a December episode in which many of Waymo’s self-driving cars came to a halt in San Francisco because of a power outage, underscoring how localized technical or infrastructure problems can ripple across driverless fleets.

Context and expansion plans

Baidu operates more than 1,000 robotaxis, mostly in China, and has been expanding its Apollo Go service overseas. The company launched services in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this year and is working with partners to introduce robotaxi operations in Britain and Switzerland. Wuhan hosted an early pilot for Baidu’s robotaxi effort and remains one of the company’s larger deployment sites.

Outlook

The scale of Wednesday’s stoppage will likely prompt closer scrutiny from regulators and potential partners as Baidu continues international rollouts. Investigators will need to determine whether the "system malfunction" was isolated to software, communications, local infrastructure, or fleet-wide systems, and how swiftly operators can restore vehicles and reassure passengers. For now, the episode raises fresh questions about resilience and emergency response as autonomous fleets grow in size and geographic reach.