Zoox has issued a software recall after a robotaxi became disoriented due to heavy smoke

Zoox issued a software recall after one of its robotic cars had difficulty navigating a smoke-filled emergency fire scene in June.

The Amazon-owned company said Friday that it has shipped a software update that will address the issue to its fleet of 105 vehicles. No one was on board the vehicle during the June incident, and Zoox told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it was not aware of injuries related to the problem.

The NHTSA report did not say where the June incident occurred. Zoox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zoox’s recall comes just one week after NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison I sent a message to self-driving car companies Warn them to stop interfering with first responders.

“Let me be clear: the inability to detect and respond appropriately to such situations constitutes a functional deficiency,” he wrote. “Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme cases.” As such, NHTSA today issues a call to action for AV developers and operators to immediately focus their resources on fixing this issue.

TechCrunch I mentioned previously About how Waymo has frequent encounters with first responders as it expands into new cities. The company has seen at least six incidents as of March of this year in which first responders had to physically move a robotaxi from the scene of an emergency.

On June 20, a Zoox robotaxi encountered “heavy smoke that obscured an active emergency fire scene that was not cordoned off with cones,” NHTSA said in its report describing the recall. Zoox’s vehicle “braked hard as it attempted to drive away before coming to a stop.” A Zoox remote operator was able to reverse the vehicle away from the scene, allowing first responders to place traffic cones.

Zoox told NHTSA it conducted an investigation to determine the root cause and identify any similar incidents. The company said: “This is the only event of this type that Zoox has experienced,” and that as of late June and early July, it had multiple conversations with the safety regulator about “severity, frequency and root causes.” Zoox decided to issue the recall on July 7, one day before Morrison’s speech.

This is not Zoox’s first recall. Company voluntarily It called the software on its vehicles in March 2025 to resolve a difficult braking issue that NHTSA had been investigating since 2024. Two more recalls in May 2025 After colliding with a passenger car, and the Zoox car colliding with an e-scooter rider.

Zoox has been steadily expanding its testing to new cities, offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco, before Commercial launch planned. This launch is contingent on the NHTSA granting the company an exemption to certain federal motor vehicle safety standards, because Zoox’s robotaxi does not have a steering wheel or pedals. As NHTSA recently suggested Removed brake pedal requirement For vehicles that are designed to be fully autonomous.