An unknown technical downside prompted numerous robotaxis owned by the Chinese language tech large Baidu to freeze on Tuesday in the midst of visitors, trapping some passengers within the automobiles 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, folks on Chinese language social media reported witnessing the automobiles instantly malfunction and cease working. Photos and videos shared on-line present the Baidu automobiles halted on busy highways, usually within the quick lane.
A university pupil in Wuhan tells WIRED that she was caught in a Baidu robotaxi with two buddies for about 90 minutes on Tuesday. (She requested to be solely recognized along with her final title, He, to guard her privateness.) The scholar says the automotive malfunctioned and stopped 4 or 5 instances in the course of the journey earlier than it will definitely parked in entrance of an intersection in jap Wuhan. Fortunately, it was not a busy street, and the group was not in fast hazard. The display screen show within the automotive requested the passengers to stay within the automotive with seatbelts on and wait for a corporation consultant to come back “in 5 minutes,” in accordance with a photograph He shared with WIRED.
He says it took about half-hour to succeed in a Baidu buyer consultant on the telephone. “They saved saying it will be reported to their superior. However they didn’t clarify what prompted [the outage] or tell us how lengthy we wanted to attend for the employees 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 dwelling 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 assist. “I attempted each method I might consider to name for assist utilizing the choices the app confirmed, however the telephone 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 put up on RedNote alongside a video displaying the button not working. She stated she needed to pressure 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 stated the state of affairs was “probably attributable to a system malfunction,” however the incident remains to be beneath investigation. Nobody was injured, and all passengers have exited the automobiles, the police added. It’s unclear what number of of Baidu’s robotaxis might have been impacted.
One dashcam recording posted to RedNote reveals a automotive passing 16 Apollo Go automobiles parked on the street within the span of 90 minutes. On a number of events, the video reveals the motive force narrowly avoiding hitting the robotaxis by braking or altering lanes on the final minute.
Others have been apparently not as lucky. In one other RedNote put up, a person claimed he crashed into one of many malfunctioning Baidu automobiles. The person wrote within the caption that he was driving over 40 mph on a freeway when the automotive in entrance of him instantly modified lanes to keep away from the stopped robotaxi. He couldn’t react quick sufficient and ended up operating into the self-driving automotive. Pictures of the person’s orange SUV being towed away present that the automotive’s front-right fender was fully torn off, and different components appeared to have sustained main injury.
