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Wiki Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software

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Bolts have OTA chevy could have tried to hide it like Tesla if they thought it was legal to avoid notification and letting people decline.

Your bolt will be getting a new battery if they can't fully restore safety on the original. That's probably the reason Tesla kept it secret - there are rules to safety laws GM is following while Tesla isn't. GM knows better because they tried concealing safety in the past and were caught
 
Yet Tesla knew a Vmax of 4.15V would be better back when they were building the 1st-gen Roadsters.
Would 250-mile range instead of 265 on the original 85 cars been so bad?
It was still more than double the range any competition had at the time.

Perhaps it's a little off-topic but I think Tesla wanted to goose the range number and the fast DC charging speed for bragging rights. I mean, you've adopted that the original 85 got 265 range miles, but how really gets 265 actual miles. I use to get 220 miles on a good day, but it's hard to keep the speed below 55mph. Our Fiat 500e has a much more accurate dynamic "guessometer" where I see and drive nearly 100 miles in stop-and-go city driving, or 55 miles at freeway speeds. We discount our Tesla by 20% stated range just to make sure we never fall short of our destination and don't consider our S85 to be an "honest" car.

As for the Vmax, I'm not sure how much testing was done before Tesla established it's parameters for production. It seems early owners were the case study and they made adjustments through OTA software updates. I'm glad they had safety in mind during a period when battery fires were all over the headlines, but I wish they were more forthcoming. I still hold out hope that a larger battery pack will be made available as an upgrade in the future. Those lucky 350V 85kWh packs look good, as do the 100kWh. I'd pay $10K with a core swap of my original 85...or $15K for the new pack and keep my old 85 for a poorman's powerwall project and sailing yacht battery bank project.
 
I'm glad they had safety in mind during a period when battery fires were all over the headlines, but I wish they were more forthcoming.
they didn't have safety in mind. If they did we would have been notified there was a mandatory software update recall as part of the investigation into a more permanent solution to be determined later.

GM can't leave these recalled batteries at 90% - it is illegal. The caps are temporary as they look for a fix be it return to full volts or replacing the dangerous batteries. This is what Tesla should have done, and what we have been talking about since the beginning. What we are now going to see is an example of what Tesla should have done if it had safety in mind, and what Tesla is actually doing because it has something else in mind.

GM followed the law for safety and everyone is being notified to make sure 100% of every affected VIN is counted by both chevy and NHTSA safety trackers to be certain everyone is safe. Tesla notified nobody and lied about it to many of us. Lying and keeping unsafe cars out there is the opposite of safety. There are plenty of people who rightfully refuse to update, and more who did update that have down dated to regain original volts and charge speeds. Since they were never notified why their car was crippled intentionally, it is logical for them to repair the damage Tesla secretly inflicted. The number of cars at risk continues to grow because Tesla refuses to this very day to take safety seriously. If they had, they would have notified us of a recall.
 
Many posts on this thread on coolant pumps running near 80% SoC. Here is the confirmation by Tesla:

Continuous Faint Humming Noise When Parked

"When battery pack reaches above 80% or close to and vehicle are parked and locked, 1 of the coolant pumps will be idling due to safety reasons and to preserve the battery pack. This are recently implemented in a firmware update."
 
Eh, proactively taking
Bolts have OTA chevy could have tried to hide it like Tesla if they thought it was legal to avoid notification and letting people decline.

Your bolt will be getting a new battery if they can't fully restore safety on the original. That's probably the reason Tesla kept it secret - there are rules to safety laws GM is following while Tesla isn't. GM knows better because they tried concealing safety in the past and were caught
If GM could have hidden it they would have except they actually had fires that were investigated where the conclusion was there's a battery issue..

Maybe if a class action gets put together then they'll replace the batteries but it's pretty obvious they just want to do a permanent 90% cap instead and are actually making you take it in to do that. If they really had an OTA method to do that and "didn't want to hide it", it'd be trivial to display it all the time as "temporarily lowered capacity".
 
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Bolts have OTA chevy could have tried to hide it like Tesla if they thought it was legal to avoid notification and letting people decline.

Your bolt will be getting a new battery if they can't fully restore safety on the original. That's probably the reason Tesla kept it secret - there are rules to safety laws GM is following while Tesla isn't. GM knows better because they tried concealing safety in the past and were caught

Limiting charge to 90% should be safer than it was when new. Now if people want to wring their hands and gnash about it all day the price of used Bolts will drop and people with less anxiety will get a chance to buy used bolts in the sub $9,999 price range that will still have 150-200 miles range even after nerfing and degradation.

That'd still be superior to a Nissan leaf that's degrading in the TN heat so it'd be an upgrade for us 2nd owners even if the first owner is upset about it.

I might pick up one myself in a few months if they get cheap enough. Run it for a while and wait for Model 3/Y to drop in price again.

Or they could just keep driving it and not lose the money on selling their car. Will the extra 5% or so range long term be that big a deal for Bolt drivers with a nerfed battery?

Tesla finally started replacing emmc for failed center screen units (whether that was forced or not I don't know), maybe we can see similar for the rangegate/chargegate issues.
 
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It's still illegal for chevy to intentionally downgrade charged to 90% as their ultimate s. They have the NHTSAs permission to do it as a stopgap part if the recall until all batteries are returned to full 100% voltage with NHTSA approval that the return is safe. It is illegal for them to downgrade bolts to 90% forever, especially without informing owners which is why they didn't simply avoid the recall process and send the update OTA ( which they can do, charge % is set by the computer that does OTA and is selected via slider. It's easily done on Bolt but just as illegal done in secret. GM is doing it safely so there is a recall and verification process for every VIN). The recall is their only reason they were able to limit charge to 90% - it makes theft legal in the name of safety, but only temporarily until the car is permanently repaired in a way that returns 100%.

Tesla has a similar recall coming for Batterygate. The NHTSA is working slower because Tesla actively tried to conceal it and lied to owners on many occasions, but the capping itself was probably just as effective as Bolts as a temporary measure. Unfortunately Tesla didn't want it to be temporary and skipped the legal aspects of safety, so there are still thousands of unsafe batteries still out there.

@Droschke the pumps run at high states of charge but it isn't for cooling specifically - listen for fans and they are low it off even though the pumps are at 100%. The reason is twofold:. Decreased charge by wasting energy, and more importantly keep coolant passively moving through the pack to "smooth out" hot spots before they become hot enough to burn out of control, and finally to monitor temperatures for anomalous readings as part of the "enhanced diagnostics" if a cell is heating up beyond safe limits a module can see it by temperature being consistently higher leaving that module than it was coming in, while other modules remain stable. Tesla is afraid of individual cells causing a chain reaction and they can't detect individual cells at risk, so they did the same think GM did and limited SOC energy, and when caught tried to return some of it while coming up with creative other ways to quietly identify and replace batteries one at a time without doing the requisite recall.

It looks like the same general issue as GM, but Tesla did it outside of established safety law.

I'm surprised no one has pointed out the open investigation into Bolt fires is actually just a petition.
 
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I'm surprised no one has pointed out the open investigation into Bolt fires is actually just a petition.

Most likely because that isn't the case. This is an actual investigation of the PE, "Preliminary Evaluation", type. (Vs. the DP, Defect Petition, that applies to Tesla.)

Bolt Investigation.png
 
Many posts on this thread on coolant pumps running near 80% SoC. Here is the confirmation by Tesla:

Continuous Faint Humming Noise When Parked

"When battery pack reaches above 80% or close to and vehicle are parked and locked, 1 of the coolant pumps will be idling due to safety reasons and to preserve the battery pack. This are recently implemented in a firmware update."
Due to safety reasons?? Wtf? How can they just nonchalantly slip this in there almost as an aside like it doesn't matter?
 
Tesla said the charge and thermal settings changes are safety related. They just don't want to recall so everyone installs the safety update.

GM did it for what looks like the same fire problem, maybe they can teach Tesla how to take safety seriously.
Yeah, the manufacturer who had five actual fires caused by this issue in the three years they sold the Bolt before they were forced to do this is going to show everyone what the right way is :rolleyes:

Most likely this will be a software fix though, so another trip to the dealer. Speculation is that it'll require either better cell monitoring or an even slower trickle charge at the top of the charge.
 
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The right way being safety first in response to fires. Rather than secrecy first and no safety -maybe - in response to more fires than the GM recall. If there was ever a safety issue, it is illegally secret even now.

I just want official confirmation from someone who isn't on Tesla's payroll that my car is safe from the fire problems my car was downgraded in response to, and that it will be restored to full functionality safely like Bolts once the NHTSA is satisfied with the recalls. Up to mow we have been lied to and fed misinformation by people Tesla directly influences with money. Recalls come from independent oversight that Tesla is trying to avoid and has been dishonest to us over repeatedly, which makes me suspicious about the ramifications of continual suspicious things like draingate trying to decrease state of charge. What are they spreading misinformation about, exactly? Why do they keep lying to us?I f we are safe a recall can just be "install 2019.16 or later immediately" and sort out the rest later, just like GM. There's still 2018 firmwares in this thread, charging to 4.2 volts, quietly staying there, no draingate, and supercharging to 90% in less than 90 minutes. Are they safe?
 
Deja vu?

GM recalling Chevrolet Bolt EVs due to fire risks amid federal probe

GM is recalling 60k batteries to software-limit their charging to a maximum 90% capacity. They don't expect an actual solution to the battery problem until next year but are issuing the recall out of an abundance of caution.

This is what Tesla should have done all along. Safety should always come before secrecy.

Does anyone else want to know if the recall update will do more than just cap vmax? Limit Regen or slow down dc charging perhaps? Maybe it will even run the pumps continually at high states of charge to try and detect anomalous cell temps?

It just might also reduce cabin cooling in hot weather to ensure battery does not go over certain newly-found temp treshold...might
 
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The right way being safety first in response to fires. Rather than secrecy first and no safety -maybe - in response to more fires than the GM recall. If there was ever a safety issue, it is illegally secret even now.
GM literally had 5 fires in 3 years for a smaller number of vehicles and a lesser amount of battery capacity (Wh) before being forced to recall and you're spinning it as "safety first". Where were you screaming about GM "keeping it secret" and doing literally nothing until they had so many actual fires they were forced to recall?

It's not like it's unknown that there were cell issues with the LG Chem batteries for a while now either. If they're so "safety first" why didn't they immediately spring into action when the Korean EV's issues came to light a while back instead of waiting until now?

The mental gymnastics here are amazing.


I'm not crucifying GM here because I don't think they've been particularly a bad actor (it's pretty par for the auto industry). It's just that they're not a paragon here and Tesla's actions are not heinous (although it seems to me that they could have done a lot better since their image is that they're "better" than the standard car industry).
 
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Rethink your "spinning". GM is issuing a "voluntary"recall for an issue Tesla experienced more fires over in a smaller number of vehicles. Tesla is lying to you to avoid voluntarily recalling anything despite admitting there is a fire safety recall needed. Teslas investigation started at about the same time as GMs, the only real difference I see is Tesla announced the fire safety problem publicly 5 months before the investigation started, but lied about it ever since, and GM kept it covered up all along (at least to non owners).

Nobody needs to be crucified. This is simply a matter of recalling for safety. Tesla refuses. GM kills people over hidden recalls, they should be remembered for that. And remembering that, we should ask why Tesla is concealing fire safety recalls that even GM is willing to disclose.

Why are we being deliberately misinformed? A recall statement "Update to 2019.16 or later" is all they ever needed to do. Why does that need " Spinning"? Tesla used to take safety seriously. It should again.

The answers to my questions, I suspect, are going to become obvious when GMs permanent fix to the shared fire problem both companies had the same temporary bandaid emergency update for come to light next year.