Chevrolet Bolt

[cwerdna]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevrol ... 792666326/ 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.

[GetOffYourGas]

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

[DaveEV]

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

I think this is quite reasonable.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevrol ... 792666326/ 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.

Not surprising...

[SageBrush]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/chevrol ... 792666326/ 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.

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

[SageBrush]

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

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.

[DaveinOlyWA]

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...

[wwhitney]

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

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

[SageBrush]

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

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

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.

[LeftieBiker]

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.

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

[cwerdna]

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.