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Zoox has issued a software recall after one of its robotaxis struggled to navigate a smoke-filled emergency fire scene in June.<\/p>\n
The Amazon-owned company said Friday that it has shipped a software update that should address the issue to its fleet of 105 vehicles. Nobody was on board the vehicle during the June incident, and Zoox told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it is not aware of injuries associated with the problem.<\/p>\n
The NHTSA\u2019s report doesn\u2019t state where the June incident took place. Zoox didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Zoox\u2019s recall comes just a week after NHTSA administrator Jonathan Morrison sent a letter to self-driving car companies<\/a> warning them to stop interfering with first responders.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me be clear: the inability to detect and appropriately respond to such situations represents a functional insufficiency,\u201d he wrote. \u201cEmergency scenes are not rare or extreme \u2018edge cases.\u2019 As such, NHTSA is today issuing a call to action for AV developers and operators to immediately focus their resources on fixing this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n TechCrunch previously reported<\/a> on how Waymo has had repeated run-ins with first responders as it expands into new cities. The company had at least six incidents as of March of this year in which first responders had to physically move robotaxis from an emergency scene.<\/p>\n NHTSA said in its report describing the recall that, on June 20, a Zoox robotaxi \u201cencountered heavy smoke that obscured an active emergency fire scene that was not cordoned off with cones.\u201d The Zoox vehicle \u201cbraked hard while attempting to steer away before coming to a stop.\u201d A Zoox teleoperator was able to reverse the vehicle away from the scene, allowing first responders to place traffic cones. <\/p>\n Zoox told NHTSA that it conducted an investigation to determine the root cause and identify any similar incidents. The company said \u201cthis is the only event of this kind that Zoox has experienced,\u201d and that through late June and early July, it had multiple conversations with the safety regulator about the \u201cseverity, frequency, and root causes.\u201d Zoox decided to issue the recall on July 7, one day before Morrison\u2019 letter.<\/p>\n This is not Zoox\u2019s first recall. The company voluntarily recalled the software on its vehicles<\/a> in March 2025 to resolve a hard braking issue that NHTSA had been investigating since 2024. It issued two more recalls in May 2025<\/a> after a collision with a passenger car, and an incident where a Zoox vehicle was struck by an e-scooter rider.<\/p>\n Zoox has been steadily expanding its testing to new cities, and is offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco, ahead of a planned commercial launch<\/a>. That launch is dependent on the NHTSA granting the company an exemption to certain Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, because Zoox\u2019s robotaxis don\u2019t have a steering wheel or pedals. The NHTSA also recently proposed removing the brake pedal requirement<\/a> for vehicles that are built to be fully autonomous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n