Right here’s the unique enterprise, posted on the Transport Canada web site:
Normal Motors will notify homeowners by mail and substitute faulty battery modules.
Right here’s the revised recall restore:
Normal Motors will notify homeowners by mail and advise you to take your automobile to a dealership to put in a complicated diagnostic software program that may monitor the high-voltage battery and warn you if it detects an issue. For those who see this warning, you must contact a dealership to rearrange alternative of the affected high-voltage battery module.
For more information, go to the Chevrolet web site.
GM’s up to date automobile software program replace will allow the automotive to watch itself over the following 10,000 kilometres. If the batteries are deemed “wholesome,” your Bolt is free and clear below the recall. The software program will robotically restore full charging functionality with out necessitating a go to to a dealership. If not, the battery module (the pack that features all the person little batteries) should get replaced by GM.
It’s probably that solely a small proportion of the battery modules from these years poses a danger of fireplace. The diagnostic software program improve will keep away from the large waste concerned in changing good battery packs and cut back the demand for important electrical automobile (EV) battery metals, that are in brief provide worldwide.
Can GM’s Bolt software program replace actually decide if the battery is protected?
The brand new software-based answer is probably going an efficient repair. Typically talking, automobile producers have been extra delicate to fires of their EVs than in gasoline autos, as a result of they need to guarantee a easy uptake of this new expertise. GM carried out significantly better inner controls for figuring out and correcting security defects after a 2010 ignition key recall that was liable for 124 or extra deaths. GM’s area reporting, recall compliance, engineering and finance departments have been all upgraded to seek out and repair security defects extra proactively. And, in line with revealed studies, many of the monetary price of this recall is being coated by LG Chem—the battery maker. So, GM probably just isn’t the first beneficiary of the associated fee financial savings.
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When did GM drop the guarantee extension?
In June 2023, GM took the guarantee extension off the desk for Bolt homeowners receiving the software program repair. Because the proprietor of a 2020 Bolt, you’ll not obtain the extra guarantee protection provided to the homeowners who bought alternative battery packs, which was accompanied by a “reset” of the unique 8-year/160,000-kilometre guarantee. And you continue to received’t have a remaining reply concerning the well being of your automobile’s batteries, nor full charging functionality, for an additional 10,000 kilometres. For a low-mileage Bolt driver, that would quantity to a different yr of ready for a definitive final result.
Even when the unique batteries in your Bolt are getting older usually, degradation within the vary of three% to 4% yearly is taken into account regular. So, the batteries in your Bolt are probably a bit of degraded in comparison with a Bolt that acquired a brand new module.
A lifting desk (1) lowers the EV battery (2) on this illustration from GM’s product security recall, issued in 2021, for Chevrolet Bolt batteries.
Doing it your self just isn’t an answer
One complainant to the Vehicle Safety Affiliation (APA) inquired about changing their Chevy Bolt batteries at their very own expense and claiming a reimbursement from GM. At $28,000 plus set up for a alternative battery module, this answer doesn’t look like reasonable. A greater choice could be to discover a supply that gives extra guarantee protection equal to what GM reneged on and ask the automaker to refund the price of buying it. To date, the APA just isn’t conscious of any mechanical insurance coverage supplier for autos that provides that form of protection on a battery module.
What to do concerning the GM Bolt battery recall
There’s not a lot you are able to do concerning the revised Bolt recall, sadly. The APA lately requested that Normal Motors do the next two issues:
- Provide to increase guarantee protection to eight years from the day of the recall restore no matter which answer applies: Stage 1 software program replace or Stage 2 battery pack alternative. (That’s a no brainer.)
- Provide significant compensation to homeowners for the inconvenience and diminished driving vary which will finally final for 2 or extra years. This might embrace a no-charge subscription to an in-vehicle service. Nonetheless, some homeowners will think about the inconvenience of parking exterior over one or two winters is value greater than that.
For more information on this, go to apa.ca.
An identical EV battery recall was dealt with higher
GM might take a web page from Hyundai Canada’s playbook. Hyundai devised a intelligent answer for the same battery alternative recall for the Kona EV. It provided homeowners $5 a day for day-after-day their Kona EV needed to be parked outside whereas ready for alternative batteries. Complaints to the APA evaporated after this system was introduced. Kona EV homeowners have been surprisingly not in a rush to be first in line for alternative battery packs! From the attitude of many Kona homeowners, $150 a month was adequate to cowl the inconvenience.