World News
China’s Robotaxi Outage Causes Traffic Chaos
While China has been diving deeper into AI R&D, a ‘system malfunction’caused more than 100 Apollo Go vehicles to stall in the city of Wuhan, according to China’s local police.
Police said reports that taxis had come to a halt started about 9pm on Tuesday, local time. Videos on social media also showed cars stopped in the middle of multi-lane roads with their hazard lights on, obstructing traffic. 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.
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. It also started a service in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this year. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
This is the first time a mass shutdown of robotaxis has been reported in China. The cause of the incident is still under investigation.