Robotaxi outage highlights pitfalls but unlikely to derail China’s push: Analysts

SHENZHEN – Numerous robotaxis froze in the streets of Wuhan earlier this week in what appeared to be a system malfunction, raising fresh concerns over the safety of driverless vehicles as their numbers rise in China and overseas.

The outage left passengers stranded on busy expressways, in some cases for more than an hour, local media reported. No injuries were reported and passengers managed to exit the vehicles safely, the police said in a statement.

Analysts say the episode involving numerous vehicles in tech giant Baidu’s Apollo Go fleet is distinct from isolated accidents earlier in China and underlines vulnerabilities in managing fleets as they grow.

“What happened in Wuhan was an outage of many vehicles in a fleet, not a driving error, and that is a different level of risk exposure to robotaxi users,” said Mr Murtuza Ali, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, a tech research firm.

Mr Bill Russo, founder of Shanghai-based consultancy Automobility, believes that such incidents may spawn negative headlines but are unlikely to materially derail driverless technology adoption in China. This is because “the market and regulators have shown a relatively high tolerance for iterative deployment, provided safety risks are contained”, he said.

Such occurrences are part of the normal maturation curve for autonomous mobility, he added. “The key question is not whether failures occur, but how quickly the system learns and improves from them.”

Investigations into the cause of the incident, which took place in the evening of March 31, were under way, the police said. Baidu did not immediately respond to The Straits Times’ request for comment.

One affected passenger, Mr Lu, told local media outlet Dute News that his vehicle “just stopped in the middle of the Third Ring Road” – on an elevated expressway – while big trucks sped past on both sides.

He said he was stuck in the robotaxi for nearly two hours, and felt “terrified” when pushing an SOS button for help did not work. Traffic police and Apollo Go eventually came to his aid.

In December 2025, US robotaxi operator Waymo saw its vehicles stall in the streets when a power outage struck San Francisco.

Mr Ali, who researches autonomous vehicles, said a likely reason for the Apollo Go outage was a system or network failure that triggered a “fleet-wide fail-safe response” in which the vehicles defaulted to a safe state and stopped moving.

“The robotaxis likely worked exactly as intended when connectivity is lost, but stopping multiple cars simultaneously proves that safety without accounting for scale can cause massive disruption,” he added.

Mr Poe Zhao, a China tech analyst and founder of the Hello China Tech newsletter, expects to see the authorities increase scrutiny over robotaxi operations, including the handling of emergencies, and whether certain types of roads need tighter restrictions.

He added that the Wuhan episode raises the question of: “Can a robotaxi fleet handle failure safely when it operates at scale?”

Investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a 2025 report that it expects China to have 500,000 robotaxis on its streets in 2035, and projects that the market will grow from US$54 million (S$69.5 million) in 2025 to US$47 billion in 2035.

Baidu’s Apollo Go is one of China’s largest operators of driverless taxis, with hundreds of these vehicles in Wuhan, which is home to its largest fleet. It is also expanding its international footprint as interest in the technology rises overseas.

The company in 2026 launched commercial robotaxi services in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and has plans to do so in Germany and Britain in partnership with the company Lyft. Baidu was reported by Bloomberg last June to also be eyeing the Singapore and Malaysia markets. In Singapore, Chinese firms WeRide and Pony.ai’s vehicles are now running or being tested in Punggol.

China has been scaling up robotaxi deployments and is no stranger to accidents with the technology. A Baidu vehicle carrying a passenger fell into a construction pit in Chongqing in August 2025, while a Hello robotaxi hit two pedestrians in Zhuzhou, a city in Hunan province, in December.

The outage in Wuhan has led to some people expressing doubts on social media about driverless vehicles. “It’s still safer to hold the steering wheel in your own hands,” said a netizen from Guangdong.

“(I’d) advise everyone not to ride in these kinds of vehicles; who knows what the outcome might be,” said another from Fujian.