An unknown technical downside triggered quite a few robotaxis owned by the Chinese language tech large Baidu to freeze on Tuesday in the course of visitors, trapping some passengers within the autos for greater than an hour.
In Wuhan, a metropolis in central China the place Baidu has deployed tons of of its Apollo Go self-driving taxis, individuals on Chinese language social media reported witnessing the vehicles out of the blue malfunction and cease working. Photographs and movies shared on-line present the Baidu vehicles halted on busy highways, usually within the quick lane.
A school scholar in Wuhan tells WIRED that she was caught in a Baidu robotaxi with two mates for about 90 minutes on Tuesday. (She requested to be solely recognized along with her final identify, He, to guard her privateness.) The coed says the automotive malfunctioned and stopped 4 or 5 instances throughout the journey earlier than it will definitely parked in entrance of an intersection in japanese Wuhan. Fortunately, it was not a busy highway, and the group was not in fast hazard. The display show within the automotive requested the passengers to stay within the automotive with seatbelt on and wait for a corporation consultant to come back “in 5 minutes,” in keeping with a photograph He shared with WIRED.
He says it took about half-hour to succeed in a Baidu buyer consultant on the cellphone. “They stored saying it might be reported to their superior. However they didn’t clarify what triggered [the outage] or tell us how lengthy we wanted to attend for the workers to come back,” He says. However nobody ever got here, and after one other hour of ready, the three passengers determined to simply get out and go house by themselves (the doorways weren’t locked).
On Chinese language social media, different passengers additionally complained about being unable to succeed in Baidu’s buyer help. “I attempted each method I may consider to name for assist utilizing the choices the app confirmed, however the cellphone line wouldn’t undergo, and after I pressed the SOS button it instructed me it was unavailable. So then what precisely is the SOS for?” wrote one individual in a publish on RedNote alongside a video displaying the button not working. She mentioned she needed to power the door to open and get out of the automotive as visitors halted to an entire cease behind her robotaxi. “Apollo Go, you actually owe me an apology,” she wrote.
Baidu didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Native police in Wuhan issued a press release round midnight in China that mentioned the scenario was “probably brought on by a system malfunction,” however the incident continues to be underneath investigation. Nobody was injured and all passengers have exited the autos, the police added. It’s unclear what number of of Baidu’s robotaxis might have been impacted.
One sprint cam recording posted to RedNote exhibits a automotive passing 16 Apollo Go autos parked on the highway within the span of 90 minutes. On a number of events, the video exhibits the driving force narrowly avoiding hitting the robotaxis by braking or altering lanes on the final minute.
Others had been apparently not as lucky. In one other RedNote publish, a person claimed he crashed into one of many malfunctioning Baidu autos. The person wrote within the caption that he was driving over 40 mph on a freeway when the automotive in entrance of him out of the blue modified lanes to keep away from the stopped robotaxi. He couldn’t react quick sufficient and ended up operating into the self-driving automotive. Photographs of the person’s orange SUV being towed away present that the automotive’s front-right fender was utterly torn off, and different components appeared to have sustained main injury.
