Baidu's Robotaxis Grind to Halt in Wuhan

0:00It's April 1st. This is Sydney News today, AI-powered stories from your city. Over 100 driverless robo-taxes, ground to a halt in Wuhan, China, leaving passengers stranded right in the middle of rush hour traffic. Local police confirmed it was a system malfunction with Baidu's Apollo-Go fleet, marking the first big mass shutdown like this in the country. These cars just froze up across busy multi-lane roads, hazard lights flashing, and blocked everything behind them. No one got hurt, but it sparked total traffic chaos in spots, with videos blowing up on social media showing the standstill. Some riders hopped out quick and walked away, but others waited hours for rescue since their vehicles were smack in the flow of traffic. Baidu runs over 1,000 of these taxis across China, and they haven't commented yet. The team's still digging into what caused the glitch, while Baidu's big moves overseas, like launching in Abu Dhabi and Dubai this year, and pushing.

1:00Into Europe next. This glitch echoes that waymo pile up in San Francisco last year, from a power outage, reminding us, robo-taxes got kinks to iron out before they rule. The roads worldwide.