Zoox has issued a software recall after one of its robot taxis struggled to navigate a smoke-filled fire scene in June.
The Amazon-owned company said Friday that it has delivered a software update to its fleet of 105 vehicles that aims to fix the problem. Zoox told TechCrunch in a statement that the software update “improves the existing ability to detect active devices.” [emergency] scenes by adding the ability to detect and respond to heavy smoke in certain situations.”
There was no one on board the vehicle during the June incident, and Zoox told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it was not aware of any injuries related to the issue. The NHTSA report does not specify where the June incident occurred, and Zoox declined to specify.
The Zoox recall comes just a week after NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison sent a letter to self-driving car makers warning them not to disrupt first responders.
“To be clear, the inability to recognize and respond appropriately to such situations constitutes functional insufficiency,” he wrote. “Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme ‘edge cases.’ Therefore, today NHTSA is calling on AV developers and operators to immediately focus their resources on resolving this issue.”
TechCrunch previously reported that Waymo had repeatedly run afoul of first responders as it expanded into new cities. The company had at least six incidents in March of this year where first responders had to physically remove robotaxis from an emergency scene.
NHTSA said in its report on the recall that on June 20, a Zoox robotaxi was “exposed to heavy smoke that obscured an active emergency fire scene that was not cordoned off with traffic cones.” The Zoox vehicle “slowed down sharply as it attempted to steer away before coming to a stop.” A Zoox teleoperator was able to back the vehicle away from the scene so first responders could set up traffic cones.
Zoox told NHTSA that an investigation was underway to determine the root cause and identify similar incidents. The company said: “This is the only event of this type that Zoox has experienced” and that it had had multiple discussions with the safety agency about “severity, frequency and root causes” through late June and early July. Zoox decided to conduct the recall on July 7, the day before Morrison’s letter.
This is not the first recall from Zoox. The company voluntarily recalled its vehicles’ software in March 2025 to fix a braking issue that NHTSA had been investigating since 2024. In May 2025, two additional recalls were issued following a collision with a passenger vehicle and an incident in which a Zoox vehicle was struck by an e-scooter rider.
Zoox has continued to expand its testing to new cities and is offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco ahead of its planned commercial launch. This launch is contingent on the NHTSA granting the company an exemption from certain Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards because Zoox’s robotaxis do not have a steering wheel or pedals. NHTSA also recently proposed eliminating the brake pedal requirement for vehicles built to be fully autonomous.
This story has been updated with a statement from Zoox.
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https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/17/zoox-issues-software-recall-after-a-robotaxi-got-confused-by-heavy-smoke/
