China has quietly resumed issuing robotaxi licenses after a three-month freeze, restarting a stalled autonomous-driving buildout that had put Baidu, Momenta and their rivals on ice. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that permit approvals are trickling out again in select cities following an industry-wide safety review that wrapped up in late June.
Momenta gets one of the first new permits
Momenta (HKEX: 6880) was among the first companies to receive a new road-testing permit, and will begin trials in Shenzhen, the megacity that borders Hong Kong. The Shenzhen government has amended its intelligent connected vehicle regulation to open the entire municipality to robotaxi operations and lower barriers to entry, a move seen as a direct bid to overtake Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan as China's leading autonomy hub.
Momenta itself announced on July 21 that its robotaxi had cleared Shenzhen's intelligent connected vehicle road-testing bar, making Shenzhen its fourth core Chinese market after Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi. The company's Robotaxi platform is built around its R7 production-grade world model, a unified perception-and-planning architecture rolled out earlier this year.
Baidu's Apollo Go creeps back into Wuhan
Baidu, whose Apollo Go fleet was the direct trigger for the freeze after hundreds of driverless cars stalled on Wuhan roads in late March, is also showing signs of coming back online. Chinese social media users have posted videos since early July of Apollo Go vehicles moving through Wuhan again, some with safety drivers in the cabin. Regulators had pulled hundreds of Apollo Go cars from service pending the safety review.
A reboot for China's robotaxi race
The restart matters because it re-opens the fastest-growing robotaxi market in the world at the exact moment Alphabet's Waymo, Tesla, Uber and Zoox are pushing hard on their own U.S. rollouts. Beijing had used the April freeze as leverage to force operators to tighten their safety cases and remote-supervision protocols; industry insiders had earlier attributed the Wuhan mass-stall to a safety self-check triggered by an unexpected traffic scenario.
With Shenzhen aggressively opening up and Wuhan gradually rehabilitating Apollo Go, the second half of 2026 looks set to be a fresh test of whether Chinese operators can hold their own against foreign incumbents. Baidu has already signalled it will push beyond China, echoing Tesla's expansion into Tampa and Orlando and the international ambitions of Hong Kong-listed Momenta after its $752M IPO.
Reporting based on coverage from Bloomberg, CnEVPost, Automotive World and Electrive.