2021 saw a wild year for the Chevy Bolt. General Motors saw an opportunity and they did it. They recalled about 141,000 vehicles of the 2017 models to the 2022 models off of the road. With about 16 of them catching fire. In some of those cases, the fires occurred after a permanent software update was installed in the relevant models. GM stays committed to replacing battery modules in about every Bolt. Yet, the company hopes to send an update that allows owners to use vehicles normally in the meantime. Normally is quite a tough range. But to be fair, the most recent patch shows that GM had those vehicles in garages to charge overnight, minus any concern. The manufacturer would recommend versus any of those behaviors way back in September.

Additionally, the update would reduce the max battery state of charge to eighty percent in the case that drivers would use the vehicle with less than seventy miles of the projected range. The overall range had been totally curtailed. As for the 2018 Bolt, there was an EPA estimate of about 238 miles per full charge. With totally charged batteries combined with a discharge, those are commonalities that would share in many fires occurring to date. General Motors played with charging limits to address such issues. The owners from before would limit a state of charge to a maximum of 90 percent. This measure is likely to go on even further, however.

When you see General Motors measures, you would notice that it would have to concede and take the battery replacement route of $2 billion. From that $1.9 billion comes out of LG technology.

This is all enlightening and scary all at once. And it’s a very sad situation. As you’d imagine Chevy Bolt would be better off than not.