Chevy Bolt Recalled

[walla2]

50,000 Bolts recalled due to fire risk while parked. Advised not to be driven or parked inside. Ouch.

50,000 Chevy Bolt EVs Recalled, Owners Told Not to Park in Garage

This is Tesla's real lead in the EV race. Sure new and old companies will follow with EVs but more than a decade of improvements to the battery has value that is difficult to calculate.

 

[CyberGus]

OMG, those EV's are so much more dangerous than ICE cars have ever been!

Oh, wait

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Ridiculous.

The proper thing to do is to nerf the battery and stay silent when customers complain.

 

[jsmay311]

Wow. A recall with no real fix and no known root cause. That’s not good.

It’s one thing to have to park an ICEV outside. More of a pain to do it with an EV that needs to get charged regularly.

And after all those years of scaremongering about spontaneous battery fires in the Volt that weren’t an actual thing, now it’s *actually* happening in the Bolt. Sheesh.

 

[EVortex]

Another GM failure. Barra could not manage her way out of a wet paper bag. Just nuts and Bolts.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Wow. A recall with no real fix and no known root cause. That’s not good.

It’s one thing to have to park an ICEV outside. More of a pain to do it with an EV that needs to get charged regularly.

And after all those years of scaremongering about spontaneous battery fires in the Volt that weren’t an actual thing, now it’s *actually* happening in the Bolt. Sheesh.

Alsoo LG Chem cells like the Kona, but LG Chem can probably only blame LG Automotive for this one.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

OMG, those EV's are so much more dangerous than ICE cars have ever been!

Oh, wait

A great reference.

 

[cwerdna]

Final remedy was finally announced. Latest doc at Vehicle Detail Search | NHTSA (there are currently 20) is at https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RCLRPT-20V701-7407.PDF.

Learn About was updated, as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoltEV/comments/n1sp1m

 

[MP3Mike]

I wonder if this Bolt EV had already had the charge to 90% or less "fix" applied:

ramkumarram's video on TikTok

Watch it now and discover more trending videos on TikTok!

www.tiktok.com

(Asking since Hyundai determined that a software fix wasn't good enough for the cells they got from LG.)

 

[mark95476]

I remember when the Bolt was the original "Tesla Killer" and was going to strangle Tesla's Model 3 in it's infancy.

I wonder if this Bolt EV had already had the charge to 90% or less "fix" applied:

ramkumarram's video on TikTok

Watch it now and discover more trending videos on TikTok!

www.tiktok.com

(Asking since Hyundai determined that a software fix wasn't good enough for the cells they got from LG.)

 

[cwerdna]

Final remedy was finally announced. Latest doc at Vehicle Detail Search | NHTSA (there are currently 20) is at https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RCLRPT-20V701-7407.PDF.

The above 1st URL got 7 more documents today, making it 27. Was at 19 for ages, then 20 then 27.

 

[Kandiru]

Don't worry, every time they go bankrupt Uncle cuts them a giant check, half of it goes into politicians pockets, and the laundromat keeps spinning while the denizens marvel at the play on words dog and pony show they put up on C-SPAN.

 

[cwerdna]

The reddit preview in post 8 has been automagically updated to include https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RCSB-20V701-5306.pdf which has the instructions for the dealer tech.

 

[MP3Mike]

New article from Electrek where they talked to the owner and got more details: Exclusive: The latest Chevy Bolt fire reveals troubling pattern that owners should be aware of - Electrek

In summary:

• The temporary recall fix had already been applied.
• The owner did not charge to full often, if ever. Even if he did, the initial recall fix would have limited it.
• The car was typically charged when it got down to about 30 miles of range left and stopped between 160-180. That’s about 65-75%.
• The car was rarely used – only 19,000 miles over 2.5 years of ownership.
• There was no damage to the car.
• The car had not been driven that morning, and it was unplugged at around 75% charge.
• The car was unplugged at the time of the fire and had been for several hours.

So the temporary recall fix was completely ineffective for this case. Though 5 of the 7 fires apparently had the same pattern of letting the car get low on charge and then filling it up vs. keeping it topped up all the time. I wonder if the long charge times this causes leads to some issue/damage in the battery cells?

 

[dgodfrey]

Just when you think it can't get worse and it does. Apparently, this was a 2019 with the latest "final" fix too. As I mentioned in a related thread, this will be a make or break event for GM. Based on the interview, I would never park a Bolt in an enclosed structure or within 20' of anything valuable. This would be even if not charging as his was not charging at the time.

It almost seems as though they are implying that letting the battery discharge to 12% before charging to 80% is the common denominator. That's pretty much how most people do it so now what? If GM is expecting Bolt owners to keep the charge within a 50% window ALWAYS, that leaves about 130 mile range. Still okay as a grocery getter but useless for road trips. Although the 55kW max charging speed already defined it as a runabout.

Because the deals were so attractive on Bolts, I referred them to people under the right circumstances, my daughter being one. I can no longer recommend it even if it was free unfortunately. I hope they do the right thing and replace all packs but it will be years before I would trust GM with an EV.

 

[MP3Mike]

Apparently, this was a 2019 with the latest "final" fix too.

It was a 2019, but only had the temporary fix. He had just gotten a notice for the final recall fix.

As I mentioned in a related thread, this will be a make or break event for GM.

Yeah, I suspect that this may cause them to go back to the drawing board on their recall. It seems like they were concentrating on a module imbalance being the problem, or maybe just a symptom of the problem. I'm just not sure that they have identified the root issue.

 

[cwerdna]

As I posted elsewhere (w/slight edits):
The procedure for covering all the recalled vehicles (all '17 and '18 + subset of '19) is up at https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RCSB-20V701-3618.pdf. '17 and '18 final procedure didn't come out until a few days ago and as usual, there's a lag before appearing at NHTSA.

Vehicle Detail Search | NHTSA grew from 29 to 34 associated docs sometime yesterday.

Bolt EV Battery Cell Inspection – TechLink explains the new DTC and diagnostics.

The recalled '19 Bolts got their final fix first. Has been out for a few weeks (see my post from May 1). '17 and '18 Bolts (all were under recall) had their final fix come out May 26.

People may also find these interesting:

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RCLRPT-20V701-7407.PDF

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RCMN-20V701-8248.pdf

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RMISC-20V701-9809.pdf

 

[miimura]

Someone in my neighborhood got a nearly identical new Bolt EV at the end of April. I had assumed that the lease ended on his original car since the plate number was close to our 3 year old Model 3. However, when I asked him about it, he said that GM bought back the car due to the battery issue.