Mass System Failure Strands Over 100 Baidu Apollo Go Robotaxis in Wuhan

A mass system failure paralyzed at least 100 autonomous vehicles operated by Baidu's Apollo Go robotaxi service in Wuhan, China, on Tuesday evening, March 31, 2026, stopping cars in the middle of busy roads and highways and stranding passengers for up to nearly two hours. Wuhan police confirmed they received a succession of reports late Tuesday that multiple Apollo Go vehicles had stopped in the middle of roads and were unable to move. Authorities stated that all passengers exited the vehicles safely and that no injuries were reported, though a traffic police officer noted in a video published by Shanghai-based outlet The Paper that some passengers were hesitant to leave because of heavy traffic and called police for assistance. The cause of the incident remains under investigation. Baidu did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters, the BBC, or AFP.

Highway collision caught on video as cars blocked traffic Videos circulated on Chinese social media documented the scale of the outage, with one appearing to show a collision on a highway involving a stalled Apollo Go vehicle. The New York Times reported that photographs on Chinese social media showed an Apollo Go car stopped in the middle of a highway that appeared to have been struck on its back left corner by an orange sport utility vehicle, which sustained considerable damage to its right front. Another video showed a passenger stranded inside an Apollo Go car that had stopped in a fast lane of a broad expressway as trucks passed at speed. Local media reported that some passengers remained trapped inside the vehicles for nearly two hours. Police said they mobilized forces to the scene in coordination with Apollo Go company staff, following established contingency plans. The incident sparked widespread discussion on Chinese social media about the safety and readiness of robotaxi services.

Wuhan hosts one of the world's largest driverless car experiments Wuhan has emerged as a central hub for autonomous vehicle deployment in China, with sources citing a fleet of over 500 Apollo Go vehicles in the city, while TVN24 reported the figure exceeds 1,000. Baidu operates Apollo Go in 26 cities worldwide, including in Beijing and other major Chinese urban centers, and has expanded into the Middle East, including Abu Dhabi and Dubai. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Apollo Go completed , a figure France 24 reported represented a 200 percent increase over the same period the previous year, with peak weeks exceeding 300,000 trips. In December 2025, ride-sharing platforms Uber and Lyft announced partnerships with Baidu to test Apollo Go vehicles on UK roads, though both still require regulatory approval before trials can begin. Apollo Go also competes in the Chinese market with Pony.ai and WeRide, which have similarly rolled out commercial services across major cities. Apollo Go began commercial operations in Beijing in 2021 and has since expanded to dozens of cities. In August 2025, an Apollo Go robotaxi carrying a passenger in Chongqing fell into a construction pit, with no injuries reported. In May 2025, a Pony.ai autonomous vehicle caught fire on a road in Beijing, also with no injuries. In December 2025, a prolonged power outage in San Francisco caused Waymo robotaxis to stall across the city, generating significant traffic disruption.

Experts warn driverless tech can fail in entirely new ways The Wuhan outage reignited safety debates about autonomous vehicles both in China and internationally. Jack Stilgoe, a professor of science and technology policy at University College London, told BBC News that while driverless technology may on average be safer than human drivers, the incident demonstrated it could still fail in unexpected ways. „If we're going to make good choices about this technology, we need to understand entirely new types of risk” — Jack Stilgoe via BBC News China's regulators had already instructed automakers in early December 2025 to delay plans for vehicles with broad self-driving features, following a crash involving a Xiaomi SU7 that killed three university students after the car disengaged from self-driving mode one second before striking a concrete barrier at 72 miles per hour, according to the New York Times. A July 2025 report by China's state-run television found that slightly fewer than half of 36 tested car models from 20 brands could safely avoid a crash when encountering trucks near a construction site at night. The Wuhan incident adds to a growing record of technical failures across the global autonomous vehicle industry, from Waymo in San Francisco to Apollo Go in Chongqing, raising questions about the resilience of fleet-wide software systems to unexpected disruptions.

Autonomous vehicle incidents: — ; — ; — ; —