The robotaxi gold rush in China has just hit its first serious speed bump. About a month ago, dozens of autonomous vehicles run by Baidu malfunctioned on Chinese roads, and Beijing has now stopped issuing new robotaxi licenses. The episode is a reminder that while domestic brands push hard on ever more advanced self-driving systems, a single bad afternoon can quickly unravel progress.
The incident itself happened on March 31, when around 200 robotaxis from Baidu’s Apollo Go program stopped dead in traffic in Wuhan. Several collisions followed and passengers were left stranded in their cars. Fortunately, no one was injured. According to an unnamed source, Baidu engineers issued a command to tell vehicles to stop and collect data on the spot, triggering the chaos.
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