Chevrolet Bolt & Bolt EUV

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevroletevgroup/permalink/1276905792666326/ has an interesting development. Even after the interim "repair" (to limit the car to 90% SoC) is performed, for now, '17 to '19 Bolts in (GM) dealer inventory must be held and can't be sold, dealer traded or used for demo purposes.

Yeah. Now that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

GetOffYourGas said:

I am satisfied with the current level of risk I have with the car set to Hilltop Reserve and parked outside.

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I think this is quite reasonable.

cwerdna said:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevroletevgroup/permalink/1276905792666326/ has an interesting development. Even after the interim "repair" (to limit the car to 90% SoC) is performed, for now, '17 to '19 Bolts in (GM) dealer inventory must be held and can't be sold, dealer traded or used for demo purposes.

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Not surprising...

cwerdna said:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevroletevgroup/permalink/1276905792666326/ has an interesting development. Even after the interim "repair" (to limit the car to 90% SoC) is performed, for now, '17 to '19 Bolts in (GM) dealer inventory must be held and can't be sold, dealer traded or used for demo purposes.

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I anticipate later years to be included shortly. People buying and/or continuing to use any model year are braver (or more foolish) than me. If I thought GM had the wherewithal to definitively fix the problem I would think about buying a car at fire sale prices and parking it at a dumpster until things were sorted out. But I don't, so I won't

GetOffYourGas said:

I'm not sure what else you would have me do, maybe sell the car and buy a Leaf+?

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You will do what you want; I was pointing out that the risk to you is unknown and the mitigation a speculation.

If it was me, I would not drive the car and it would be parked somewhere it could catch on fire and not harm others or other property. I would also have GM on a short leash before I demanded they take the car back and refund every penny I spent on the car.

I see the risk as minimal; less than an hour on a busy freeway. What I expect will happen is Chevy will issue cash to owners or a buyback option and most of them will take the cash. Don't expect much; guessing $1000 or so and it will fade away into the sunset of our realities.

To add; I don't know why as I am out and about a lot less than normally due to obvious reasons and the weather but I have had 3 VERY near misses in the span of a week. One a girl on her phone sitting at the corner I was turning left at and she pulled out just as I was in front of her. Luckily she looked up in time to see me and stop about a foot short of t boning me at about 5 mph.

Another was simply clueless to their location getting off the freeway then immediately moving 3 lanes to the left and decided as I was passing them to move from an unrestricted lane (no turn requirements) into my lane as I was beside them. Luckily they moved slow enough that I could see what they were doing but despite my being on the horn the entire time, they simply just kept moving over.

The 3rd one which was the least critical one as I pretty much expected them to do what they did; we have a move right when a disabled vehicle is on the side of the freeway IF there is room. There wasn't as I was coming up on their left about 10 mph faster than they were moving. Before they started moving, they slowed down another 10 mph making forcing me into using my brakes (a rare occasion) I guess it was time to scrape the pads anyway...

SageBrush said:

You have NO IDEA what the risk is, because GM has not figured out the cause(s)

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I would just like to point out that you don't need to know the cause to estimate the risk.

I haven't been following so closely, but there have been, what, 5 incidents so far? So one can model the events in a few different ways (constant chance per car per day of its life; increasing chance as the car ages; etc) and for the models which are consistent with the incident pattern so far, get an estimate of the chance of occurrence.

It's not like your car has a 1 in 1000 risk of catching on fire tomorrow. For a basic upper bound, if there were 5 events in the last year, and there are 70,000 cars, that's more like a 1 in 10,000 risk of happening over a year. Which is too high, but in my opinion not so high as to require behavior changes beyond those recommended.

Cheers, Wayne

wwhitney said:

SageBrush said:

You have NO IDEA what the risk is, because GM has not figured out the cause(s)

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I would just like to point out that you don't need to know the cause to estimate the risk.

I haven't been following so closely, but there have been, what, 5 incidents so far? So one can model the events in a few different ways (constant chance per car per day of its life; increasing chance as the car ages; etc) and for the models which are consistent with the incident pattern so far, get an estimate of the chance of occurrence.

It's not like your car has a 1 in 1000 risk of catching on fire tomorrow. For a basic upper bound, if there were 5 events in the last year, and there are 70,000 cars, that's more like a 1 in 10,000 risk of happening over a year. Which is too high, but in my opinion not so high as to require behavior changes beyond those recommended.

Cheers, Wayne

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I considered these same estimates and decided they are not appropriate,
because you are starting from an assumption that the risk is evenly distributed. I would not take that leap of faith

People here are irrational (aka FOS.) They post photos of 1/100,000 Tesla fire events a year as a reason to not drive a Tesla and then shrug off Bolt fires occurring at an incidence some 10 fold higher, and without a precipitating external cause to boot.

People here are irrational (aka FOS.) They post photos of 1/100,000 Tesla fire events a year as a reason to not drive a Tesla and then shrug off Bolt fires occurring at an incidence some 10 fold higher, and without a precipitating external cause to boot.

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You are talking about one person, as best I can tell. You want irrational people, try the Tesla forums.

Indeed re: wwhitney's comments. Yes, about 70K '17 to '19 Bolts has the number I've seen thrown around in Bolt forums/FB groups and 5 known fires, so far.

I'm not incredibly nervous yet and of course won't charge higher than 90% SoC for now. Oddly, as of last night in the My Chevrolet app to check for recalls, it shows for my VIN, there are no recalls. When I'd put my VIN into https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls, it also shows no recalls. Some others have reported the same thing. It's unclear if there's a lag, bug/error or our "non-recalled" pre-'20 Bolts have packs or modules not assembled in Korea or a part number that's not believed to be affected.

If the Bolt fires rise into the dozens or say 100+, esp. if they weren't charged beyond 90%, then I would start getting nervous and be parking it outside.

SageBrush said:

I considered these same estimates and decided they are not appropriate,
because you are starting from an assumption that the risk is evenly distributed. I would not take that leap of faith

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I mentioned different models beyond the constant chance per unit time model, so I am not assuming anything. But that model gives you a rough estimate of the order of magnitude of the risk. I can imagine situations where the current risk is 10 times the average historical frequency, but it seems unlikely that is 100 times the average historical frequency.

For example, I think we can discount the model where all the batteries are programmed to burst into fire on 12/31/2020, and that 5 of them had a bug and executed self-conflagration prematurely. : - ) But that would certainly be a situation where the observed historical frequency would not be a good predictor of the future risk.

Cheers, Wayne

In one of the Bolt FB groups, there was an ~1.5 page FAQ floating around that did say that GM intends to find the root cause and remove the 90% charge limit once the investigation has been completed and defective battery packs have been identified and repaired or replaced.

It's at https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10222925491347094&set=p.10222925491347094&type=3, but I think people not in that group won't be able to see it. There's also a question and answer about why some '19 and all '20 Bolts aren't involved in the recall. It claims select '19 vehicles were built using cells at LG Chem's Ochang, Korea facility and they believe that's where the issue developed. And, that the verified incidents investigated so far had batteries from there.

wwhitney said:

SageBrush said:

I considered these same estimates and decided they are not appropriate,
because you are starting from an assumption that the risk is evenly distributed. I would not take that leap of faith

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I mentioned different models beyond the constant chance per unit time model, so I am not assuming anything. But that model gives you a rough estimate of the order of magnitude of the risk. I can imagine situations where the current risk is 10 times the average historical frequency, but it seems unlikely that is 100 times the average historical frequency.

For example, I think we can discount the model where all the batteries are programmed to burst into fire on 12/31/2020, and that 5 of them had a bug and executed self-conflagration prematurely. : - ) But that would certainly be a situation where the observed historical frequency would not be a good predictor of the future risk.

Cheers, Wayne

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Cute humor aside, can you exclude environmental variables ? Usage variables ? Production variables ? Supply variables ? Each would be a subset of the entire group. It is just not reasonable to homogenize the fleet

Moreover, there are no good reasons to think that reported fire numbers will not increase, and at a different rate than seen thus far.

SageBrush said:

It is just not reasonable to homogenize the fleet

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I'm going to stand by my statement that it is a reasonable starting point for risk estimates, with the caveat there could be some emergent phenomenon that will cause the future frequency to exceed the observed historical frequency by up to a factor of ten. I would be amazed if the frequency suddenly jumped by a factor of 100, I don't find that a possibility worth worrying about.

Cheers, Wayne

P.S. My initial comment was in response to the claim that we have "no idea" what the risk is, and I'm just pointing out we can easily get some idea, to within an order of magnitude at least.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2019/CHEVROLET/BOLT%252520EV/5%252520HB/FWD#recalls has a lot more associated documents now (10, at the moment). I'm trying to work my way thru them now.

I saw a FAQ floating around before (screenshot and the posted in a private Bolt FB group). I see a a copy at https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2020/RMISC-20V701-2689.pdf but it looks like a slightly older copy with only 14 Q&A instead of 16.

cwerdna said:

It's at https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10222925491347094&set=p.10222925491347094&type=3, but I think people not in that group won't be able to see it. There's also a question and answer about why some '19 and all '20 Bolts aren't involved in the recall. It claims select '19 vehicles were built using cells at LG Chem's Ochang, Korea facility and they believe that's where the issue developed. And, that the verified incidents investigated so far had batteries from there.

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From the above doc, there is:

Q12) Why aren’t some 2019 and all 2020 BOLT EVs involved in this recall? Is there a different battery?
A12) Select vehicles in the 2019 model year were built using battery cells produced at LG Chem’s Ochang, Korea, facility, which is where we believe the issue developed. The verified incidents investigated thus far had batteries produced at this facility. Additionally, the 2020 Bolt EV uses a different cell design than the vehicles affected by this recall, which enabled us to increase range to 259 miles.

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The My Chevrolet app still shows no recalls for my specific VIN of my '19 Bolt. https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls still shows 0 unrepaired recalls for my VIN.

To quote from boltage at https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/ev-reliability-in-consumer-reports-surveys.36819/, he pointed to https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars/ and

85 Chevrolet Bolt
54 Hyundai Kona Electric
54 Nissan Leaf
53 Tesla Model 3
31 Tesla Model X
26 Tesla Model S
18 Kia Niro EV
12 Audi E-Tron
5 Tesla Model Y

It does seem odd that the EV versions of the Kona and Niro do much worse than the non-EV versions. In contrast, the Bolt is the most reliable Chevrolet model in the surveys.

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I didn't realize the ratings at https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars/ are actually visible to those w/o a CR account until I tried (while not signed in). I can confirm his numbers are right and you can too.

From going thru the GM nameplates there, seems like the Bolt is the 2nd most reliable GM vehicle listed there.

This may be old news ..
GM has issued a recall for 68k Bolts due to fire risk, and I think is now recommending that all Bolts not exceed 90% SoC

This link
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/2/22135764/chevy-bolt-batteries-catching-fire-class-action-lawsuit
has some details although the reason for the "news" was to report the filing of a class action lawsuit.

So far as I know, GM has identified a *correlation* between high SoC, a specific factory, and fires. The cause(s) remain unknown, so other Bolts may turn out to be fire risks also and the 90% SoC advice may turn out to be an inadequate or ineffective measure.

SageBrush said:

This may be old news ..
GM has issued a recall for 68k Bolts due to fire risk, and I think is now recommending that all Bolts not exceed 90% SoC

This link
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/2/22135764/chevy-bolt-batteries-catching-fire-class-action-lawsuit
has some details although the reason for the "news" was to report the filing of a class action lawsuit.

So far as I know, GM has identified a *correlation* between high SoC, a specific factory, and fires. The cause(s) remain unknown, so other Bolts may turn out to be fire risks also and the 90% SoC advice may turn out to be an inadequate or ineffective measure.

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In other news, FUD spreading has helped Elon become the second richest person in the USA. Keep it up and perhaps he might be the first Trillionaire.

cwerdna said:

To quote from boltage at https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/ev-reliability-in-consumer-reports-surveys.36819/, he pointed to https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars/ and

85 Chevrolet Bolt
54 Hyundai Kona Electric
54 Nissan Leaf
53 Tesla Model 3
31 Tesla Model X
26 Tesla Model S
18 Kia Niro EV
12 Audi E-Tron
5 Tesla Model Y

It does seem odd that the EV versions of the Kona and Niro do much worse than the non-EV versions. In contrast, the Bolt is the most reliable Chevrolet model in the surveys.

Click to expand...

I didn't realize the ratings at https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars/ are actually visible to those w/o a CR account until I tried (while not signed in). I can confirm his numbers are right and you can too.

From going thru the GM nameplates there, seems like the Bolt is the 2nd most reliable GM vehicle listed there.

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Seems like the CR page's ratings are behind a paywall now. I'm guessing that was the original intent.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201123161426/https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars/ has a copy not blocked by paywall.

cwerdna said:

Seems like the CR page's ratings are behind a paywall now. I'm guessing that was the original intent.

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I have access to CR's online subscription content via my public library; you might be able to get it that way, too.

15-30 years ago when CR was my go to resource for researching what to buy. Sadly, I find the current reviews and ratings to be far from useful. Having access to the on-line content only helps to show me I wouldn't be missing much if my library dropped it, because I wouldn't pay for what they now offer. My current print subscription runs through the end of 2021, and I'll likely not renew.