I'm not talking about the costs for the Roadster pack. Even the Model 3 pack still costs more than $12k if you want a replacement pack (which is refurb). Tesla haven't quite reached their original goal yet in terms of lower battery costs.
That coverage only came way late when the recall was expanded significantly. While the issue was ongoing, they downplayed it as best as possible. The approach to that is in stark contrast to Tesla where they make a big deal of fires even when there is no evidence it's related to a detect.
The original recall was in Nov 2020 that covered only all '17 to '18 Bolts + subset of '19 which only included Korean made batteries.
Not sure what April you're talking about.
Replacement prices aren't completely indicative of the actual costs. Their price is likely to be market driven and there isn't much of a market for them at present. It's hard to know what the cost to Tesla for production batteries are.
But Tesla's goal was a retail cost of $12k for the pack or even lower (was the goal even for the S, link below). This would address concerns by buyers if they ever have to replace a pack out of warranty. They haven't reached that point. It's irrelevant to the buyer if Tesla's internal costs are lower if it costs the buyer more than $12k for a refurb pack even for parts only.
I'm talking specifically about their TV mentions, given that's where their prime coverage would be. Their youtube channel has it linked. Obviously for articles, you can find more links, but how upfront it is will vary (would it be buried in some other section of news). For the Bolt issue, which has a much larger impact, they get people onboard to downplay things. While for Tesla even for a single fire they do a deep report on it even with no details yet. Ironically they mention specifically the phenomenon of too much coverage of Tesla fires disproportionate to the actual prevalence:
Again, it's hard for me to catalog and categorize each mention of Bolt recall and fires on CNBC but ok, if you want go by CNBC's YouTube coverage, here are some beyond the ones you pointed to:
driveteslacanada.ca
www.chevybolt.org
All those are after things blew up, which was my point. AFAIK they didn't have coverage of the individual Bolt fires before the recall, nor in the earlier stages before it was expanded. For Tesla though, they have no qualms mentioning things even if it's a single car where there are few details on the fire.
Yeah, that was what I was what I was thinking of in April. I just remembered that was when officially they had the recall solution (which of course turned out not to be, but this is in hindsight, we didn't know that back then). The earlier notices, they didn't have a remedy figured yet.
Yeah, I saw those reports too. There was also some confusion from the reporting and communication of GM about parking 50 feet from other cars (not sure if GM walked back from that), which is an obvious deal breaker for a lot more people (even those that could deal with the garage/charging restrictions).Some of the paranoia has gotten so bad, we've gotten numerous reports of parking lots (via signage and emails) and even someone who works at a FANG company banning Bolts from parking there. Here are a few examples:
San Francisco parking lot bans Chevy Bolt EVs following recall over fire concerns [Update]
Chevrolet Bolt EV owners have have been banned from a San Francisco parking lot over concerns they might catch fire, even when not plugged in.
Bolt Parking Only
Have parking companies ever banned ICE vehicles that were recalled due to possibility of catching fire... even when parked and turned off (this apparently exists)? How about Teslas or Kona EVs? I genuinely don't know the answer to this. Maybe GM can sue some of these parking companies and that...
I'd seen similar reports at SFO, DTW airports and one at a place in Century City, CA. Besides the one person who works at a FANG company that's a victim, I recall hearing of a few others. They have a pretty good reason to seek buyback or a rental/loaner.
Trust me. I am watching all of this like a hawk. I have been emailing the GM Regional Dealership representative every two weeks. The latest is that they will be updating the recall shortly dividing the cars into VIN with expected immediate (or near immediate) replacements, and the rest of us, that they will get new software installed while they make a bunch more batteries. They will need to do something because they last time they tried the software route it didn't work, which prompted the latest round of fires. There are just not enough sensors in the Bolt battery to detect the localized conditions that lead to the thermal runaway (unless they figured out something new in the last month, but I suspect not...) They restarted the production line, which makes think I might see about them buying back my 2021 (with 1K miles on it, which was the swap I did for my 2019 affected by the first recall) and swapping for a 2022 with the new process battery. I guess we will see what the expected mitigations after the recall is updated and whether or not my car is in the good VIN batch or Bad VIN batch. Not sure which one is worse to be honest.
This makes sense. Tesla had the same problem with the early Roadsters (and probably later S3XY as well). Their solution was to cycle coolant through the gaps between all of their stacked cylindrical cells to ensure that the temperature of all the cells was the same. That way a few sensors could handle a lot of cells.
media.gm.com
Interesting that the settlement GM reached appears to be with LG Electronics Inc. and not LG Energy Solution Inc. Why is the liability not following the business unit that actually produced the faulty cells? I have not followed the actual structure of the spin-out of the battery business from LG Electronics.LG to pay up to $1.9 billion to General Motors over Bolt EV battery fires
Problems with the Bolt – the company's flagship mainstream EV – have led the automaker to recall every one of the electric cars since production began in 2016.www.cnbc.com
General Motors, LG Electronics Reach Agreement on Bolt EV Recall Costs
General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) announced today it has reached an agreement under which LG Electronics Inc. will reimburse GM for costs and expenses associated with the recall of Chevrolet Bolt EVs and EUVs due to manufacturing defects in battery modules supplied by LG.
Both seem to describe only the battery pack replacement procedure, but for the newer ones I remember them planning to do module replacements, so perhaps there will be other documents for that? Or have they changed their plans and are just going to the locations swap the packs completely?
You are correct on the first point. That was what GM said for '20 to '22. See Chevy expands recall to include through 2022 chevy bolts....
Ouch, hopefully you get a more reasonable response from work. To be fair to the Bolt, there are plenty of ICE cars that may be under similar recall and you don't typically see this kind of response from locations.
Exactly. In my email, I pointed them to numerous examples of non-EVs being recalled for fires while turned off (e.g. at Bolt Parking Only) and whether we've banned all of those?
