China pauses new autonomous vehicle licenses after Baidu robotaxi chaos

Dozens of Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis came to a dead stop in Wuhan last month, leaving passengers stranded, clogging traffic and putting a high-profile fault in China’s self-driving push on display in the middle of the road. Wuhan police said a system failure caused the outage on March 31, and passengers were able to exit safely with no injuries reported, but the scene rattled regulators because the disabled cars were blocking roads and elevated expressways in the city that houses Apollo Go’s biggest deployment.

China has now suspended issuing new licenses for autonomous vehicles, a move that effectively freezes expansion for robotaxi operators. The halt means companies cannot add robotaxis to existing fleets, launch new pilot projects or expand into additional cities. Baidu’s Wuhan robotaxi operations have also been suspended while local authorities investigate the incident.

The response shows how quickly Beijing is willing to tighten the screws after a visible autonomy failure. Three agencies, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, met earlier in April with officials from cities running robotaxi and autonomous-driving pilot programs, and regulators urged local governments to conduct full self-reviews and strengthen safety monitoring. That is a sharp regulatory snapback after a public breakdown that involved not one isolated vehicle, but dozens of Baidu cars stopping in traffic across Wuhan.

The episode matters because Wuhan is Apollo Go’s largest base in China, with more than 1,000 fully driverless vehicles on the road there. Baidu said Apollo Go had surpassed 11 million rides by May 2025 and was operating in 15 cities, a scale that had helped frame China as one of the fastest-moving markets in the global robotaxi race. The new freeze could force operators to slow expansion plans and reset assumptions about how quickly autonomous fleets can scale without triggering a public safety response.