{"id":579339,"date":"2026-04-01T21:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579339\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:34:10","slug":"robotaxi-outage-in-china-strands-passengers-and-causes-traffic-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/579339\/","title":{"rendered":"Robotaxi outage in China strands passengers and causes traffic chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Robotaxi passengers in China became stranded on busy roads after their driverless cars came to a sudden halt in heavy traffic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">A &#8220;system malfunction&#8221; caused more than 100 Apollo Go vehicles to stall in the city of Wuhan, according to local police.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">While no injuries were reported, it did cause traffic chaos in some cases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Videos on social media showed cars stopped in the middle of multi-lane roads with their hazard lights on, obstructing traffic.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-12-23\/self-driving-uber-lyft-london-partnership-baidu-chinese-tech\/106172408\" data-component=\"FullBleedLink\" class=\"RelatedCard_link__rsgR9 FullBleedLink_root__lTw_U interactive_focusContext__yRhc_ interactive_defaults__AKxUU FullBleedLink_showVisited__g3Xvz\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Uber and Lyft announce robotaxi trials for London<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP RelatedCard_synopsis__cFwMW Typography_sizeMobile14__u7TGe Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Rideshare companies Uber and Lyft are planning to bring self-driving cars to the streets of London in the first half of 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The driverless taxis in Wuhan are operated by Baidu, a Chinese internet and AI company that is planning to expand its Apollo Go robotaxi business to Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">It also started a service in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Baidu, which operates more than 1,000 driverless taxis in China, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Police said reports that taxis had come to a halt started about 9pm on Tuesday, local time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The cause of the incident is still under investigation.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Two white cars on a road in China.\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f904886723d4437dd1b20be8b960e8d6.jpeg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Apollo Go, Baidu&#8217;s robotaxi service, has more than 1000 cars operating in China.\u00a0 (REUTERS\/Ethan Wang)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">While some passengers were easily able to exit the taxis, others were stuck for hours and had to be rescued because their vehicles stopped in the middle of a busy, multi-lane roads.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">It is the first time a mass shutdown of robotaxis has been reported in China.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">But last year, many of Waymo&#8217;s self-driving cars in San Francisco came to a stop due to a power outage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Reuters\/AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robotaxi passengers in China became stranded on busy roads after their driverless cars came to a sudden halt&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[284060,64,63,40165,99,512,92274,18850,44342,76881,91712],"class_list":{"0":"post-579339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-apollo-go","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-baidu","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-china","14":"tag-driverless-cars","15":"tag-robotaxi","16":"tag-robotaxis","17":"tag-waymo","18":"tag-wuhan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}