China has begun issuing robotaxi permits again, ending a freeze on new autonomous driving licenses that had been in place since April, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg1.
The resumption is occurring gradually on a city-by-city basis following the completion of an industry-wide safety review in late June2,4. Regulators had imposed the freeze on April 29 after a mass outage on March 31, in which more than 100 Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis stalled simultaneously across Wuhan, many on busy motorways. Passengers were left stranded for up to two hours as in-car SOS systems failed and customer service calls went unanswered. At least three collisions involving other road users colliding with the stopped vehicles were reported in the aftermath.
Momenta received one of the first new permits, allowing the company to conduct trials in Shenzhen. Shenzhen's local government amended its connected vehicle regulation to explore opening up the entire city for autonomous vehicle operations. Baidu's Apollo Go is also showing signs of resuming operations in Wuhan. Baidu and Momenta are among the first operators to receive permits under the resumed process.
Baidu shares rose as much as 4.1% in afternoon trading in Hong Kong on July 23, while rivals Pony AI and WeRide also advanced.
The lifting of the freeze indicates the Chinese government is putting cutting-edge technologies back at the forefront of its priorities as China competes against the United States for leadership in autonomous driving, Bloomberg reported.
ANALYSIS The city-by-city approach to permit resumption, rather than a blanket nationwide restart, suggests regulators are maintaining tighter oversight of autonomous vehicle deployments even as they allow the industry to resume growth. The fact that Momenta — not Baidu, whose vehicles triggered the freeze — received one of the first permits in Shenzhen rather than Wuhan points to a deliberate geographic and operator diversification in the restart process.
The three-month halt represented a significant disruption for China's robotaxi sector, and the resumption removes a regulatory overhang that had frozen new deployments entirely. The immediate stock market reaction across Baidu, Pony AI, and WeRide reflects the commercial significance of permit access to these companies' expansion plans.