Nathan Gardner loved his 2019 Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle when he bought it three years ago, but now it sits outside his home “like a firebomb,” he said.
He wants General Motors to buy it back. So do Bolt owners Wendy Fong, Stan Goldberg and Durham Smith. They find it unsettling to own a vehicle even GM has warned could catch on fire.
“It’s unnerving at the very least,” said Smith of Lake Wylie, South Carolina. He owns a 2022 Chevy Bolt EUV. “How can we possibly put a car in our garage that might catch on fire? I don’t feel secure parking a car outside given our tree coverage.”
Last month, GM expanded its second recall on Bolts to include all model years through 2022 – that means Smith’s Bolt too, which he’d bought just 15 days earlier. The recall, which affects about 141,000 vehicles globally, is due to battery defects that could start a fire. There have been a dozen Bolts that have caught fire while parked, although GM has not confirmed that each of those fires was caused by defective batteries.
GM has apologized to its Bolt owners for the inconvenience, saying it and its battery maker, LG Chem, have “hundreds of people” working around the clock to find the cause of the problem and correct it to ensure defect-free products will be made going forward.
As of Friday, GM spokesman Kevin Kelly said the automaker is “still working with LG on manufacturing process updates.”
GM has said that when it is confident that LG Chem can produce defect-free battery modules, GM will notify Bolt owners in writing and repairs will begin. Once a repair is made, GM will provide an eight-year/100,000 mile warranty on it. In the meantime, GM has assured Bolt owners that if they follow three steps, the cars should be safe:
- Keep the car charged to only 90%.
- Avoid depleting the battery below a range of at least 70 miles.
- Do not park the car in a garage or charge it overnight.
“We understand the frustration Bolt EV owners are experiencing and are working as quickly as we can to make sure LG has instituted updated manufacturing processes based on both of our teams working together on the issues,” Kelly said.
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‘Minor problem, minor risk’
Some Bolt owners take the recall in stride.
“There’s over 80,000 Bolts made and just over a dozen fires. There’s hundreds more who have been in (unrelated) accidents,” said Douglas Shrock of Eureka, California, who owns a 2021 Bolt. “You’re more likely to get in an accident. That’s my risk assessment. Nothing changed for me.”
Shrock even used an inverter on his Bolt last year to power his house during an electrical outage. Kelly said GM does not encourage that because the Bolt was not designed to do that. Still, Shrock is a fan of the vehicle.
“The problem is a minor problem. In life, it’s an incredibly minor risk,” Shrock said. “So if I don’t get a new battery for three years, that’s an 11-year warranty for me when I do get it. I am very happy with the car.”
But for others, the safety steps are only doable for so long and the risk is too great.
“How is that realistic? If it’s your only vehicle how are people getting by?” said Nathan Gardner, the Bolt owner who lives in Sonora, California. “There are people like myself in fire-prone areas putting their families and homes at risk because there’s nowhere to charge and you can’t stay up all night to watch it charge. I am not sure why these cars are even on the road?”
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‘Can’t sleep at night’
The public has taken notice of the recall too with some parking garages forbidding Bolts an entrance.
On the Chevy Bolt EV and EUV Owners Group on Facebook, a Bolt owner posted a photo of a sign on his office parking garage in Seattle, Washington, that read: “Chevrolet Bolt EVs are strictly prohibited from entering this facility in conjunction with the recent recall due to fire-related safety concerns.”
The person who posted the photo expressed frustration that there is no fix yet, noting he had to street park nearly 2 miles away. He spoke to the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY network, but asked that his name not be published because he just started the buyback process with GM for his 2021 Bolt and he does not want to derail it.
But when asked about his reaction to the recall, he said: “I feel very lied to. I specifically bought the 2021 over a used 2016 because I was told it wasn’t a risk, the problem had been taken care of.”
Meanwhile, Gardner, 46, has owned his 2019 Bolt since October 2018 when he bought it new for $42,000. He has enjoyed it, even after GM issued the first recall last November on 2017-19 model year Bolts for potential fire risk. He said he followed GM’s safety protocols then and got GM’s repair done on it in May. He was assured by his dealer that it all looked good, he said.
But in June, Gardner and his family returned home from a camping trip, plugged the vehicle in to charge it in the garage and within a short time smelled intense heat. Gardner, who works as a park ranger and firefighter, said the garage was at least 90 degrees inside.
“I felt along the rims and bottoms of the car,” Gardner said. “The inside wasn’t hot, but the lower areas near the battery were really hot. I would chalk that up to a close call.”
It was the first time he ever had a problem with the car, but it would be the last, he said. By mid-June, he was pushing GM to buy back his Bolt.
“If my property caught on fire, we could be the reason that all of Sonora burns off the map,” said Gardner, who lives near many of the recent wildfires. “I can’t sleep at night knowing the car outside our home could possibly catch on fire.”
In August, GM sent Gardner a letter saying that it would buy back his Bolt, but as of Wednesday, Gardner said GM has not said how much it will give him for the car, though his dealer told him to expect $23,000, “which is insane. This is a car I would have otherwise kept for 10 or 15 years.”
Gardner still wants a buyback even if there is a fix, but he said he’ll remain open in the future.
“If the ’22 model was clear I would have switched right over,” he said. “However, I’m going to wait and see what happens. I’m not interested in being a guinea pig on fire.”
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No payment on it
GM’s Kelly said GM is buying back vehicles on a case-by-case basis, but he declined to reveal the criteria used to determine whether a person gets a buyback and the buyback amount.
Smith, 74, is determined to get a buyback. He said he refuses to pay on the vehicle, he is considering contacting a lawyer and he might run a full-page ad in his local newspaper telling his story.
On Aug. 5, Smith and his wife, Cyndie, bought a 2022 Bolt EUV – the all-new compact electric SUV – for about $40,000. The couple wanted to be environmentally conscious, plus it was fun to drive and, “I loved the car, it was just wonderful,” Cyndie said.
But on Aug. 20, their new vehicle was part of GM’s recall. Four days later, Smith returned the vehicle to the dealership, hoping to exchange it for a Buick Envision SUV, he said. But the dealership offered them $29,900 for it and the Envision was $39,900, Smith said.
Frustrated, Smith decided rather than park the Bolt on his tree-lined driveway or in his garage, he left the Bolt, with the keys in it, at the dealership and called a taxi to take him home. His first payment for it is approaching and the car remains at the dealership.
“I am looking at a couple of options, none of which are paying on it because I feel that would be to acquiesce and it’d be an admission of ownership,” Smith said. “I see it as unethical on General Motors’ part to leave the car on the market.”
Smith has submitted all required paperwork to the automaker seeking a buyback, he said, and now he waits for a response.
A lifelong GM customer, Smith said if GM and LG figure out a fix, he will still likely want a buyback because “GM’s actions thus far have done nothing to instill confidence in either their capacity to fix the problem nor in any veracity in a statement about having done so.”
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‘Expediently executed’ or out
It’s the waiting that has Wendy Fong worried and wanting her money back.
Fong bought her 2021 Bolt EUV on July 8, just a month before her vehicle would be part of the recall. She lives in a townhouse in Los Angeles so had there been a fire in her garage, she said, it would have affected her neighbors.
She likes the vehicle, but she said she hates the uncertainty around the recall.
“I would like to have a timetable of, ‘This is what’s going to happen as a customer and if you don’t like it, we’ll buy it back or we’ll put you in a different car,’ ” Fong said. “I don’t want to deal with this on a long-term basis, and I don’t want a patch or temporary fix.”
Fong said if there is a fix that is reliable, safe and “expediently executed,” she would keep the vehicle. She admits “expediently executed” is subjective. For her it means a maximum of three months to get the repair done.
“Living with the existing restrictions per GM or for an indeterminable time would not be acceptable,” Fong said. “For our car specifically, the recall status as of Wednesday morning is still, ‘Incomplete. Remedy not yet available.’”
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In a bind
Stan Goldberg, 78, accepts the fact that he will have to be patient.
GM rejected his ask for a buyback of his 2017 Bolt, a vehicle he bought used two years ago, he said. Goldberg, who lives in San Francisco, said GM did not provide a reason for the rejection. So he feels he is in a bind.
“What are you going to do? You can sell the car, but once the recall is out you’re not supposed to sell the car and then you have the issue of what do you do in its place?” Goldberg said. “That’s a problem.”
Goldberg noted that a global shortage of semiconductor chips has made new-car inventory tight and prices sky-high for both new and used cars.
“If you want an EV, the deliveries are out until springtime,” Goldberg said. “So you don’t have an immediate avenue to solve the problem. You’re stuck with being patient.”
That comes with a price. Goldberg has been parking the Bolt on his driveway instead of in his garage due to the recall and a rodent climbed inside and chewed up his charger cord. That cost him $300 to replace.
Still, Goldberg said he is prepared for it to take six months before his Bolt will get new battery modules once there is a fix. But he said he’d like to see GM offer other incentives to owners such as putting them in an internal combustion engine car or offering incentives on the upcoming Cadillac Lyriq all-electric SUV due out later next year. GM declined to comment on GM’s specific considerations with customers, saying that happens on a case-by-case basis.
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‘Hang tight’
Lawyer Shalev Amar, owner of Amar Law Group, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, specializes in lemon laws. He said most states’ lemon laws say once there is a fix, a car cannot be in the shop, out of service, for 30 days or longer. In this case, there are other considerations.
“Maybe there are environmental factors such as they live in Arizona, it’s a desert out here so that might make things more precarious” to charge the Bolt, Amar said. “So even with the safety restrictions, the vehicle can’t be driven at all for at least 30 days. In my mind that’s unreasonable. That’s the same as it being in the shop for 30 days under lemon laws.”
Amar said the restrictions on charge, miles to drive and parking it outside implies, “the use is so limited, once it gets to 60 days without a fix, that would be unreasonable,” in his view.
“The other part of the lemon law is substantial impairment in use and value,” Amar said. “(Bolt owners) are not getting what they paid for. I don’t know how anyone can argue, with a straight face, that these restrictions are not substantial impairment in use and value.”
He said GM should provide Bolt owners with loaner vehicles. GM’s Kelly said, “We will work with our dealers, as well as rental car providers, to provide loaner transportation.”
For its part, GM has idled production of its new Bolts built at Orion Assembly in Orion Township from Aug. 23 to Sept. 27. So it is eager to find a fix as much as anyone, its spokesman has said. But GM insists it will not restart production or do repairs until it has absolute confidence in LG making defect-free products.
“Once we’re confident we have the correct processes in place, we will work as quickly and safely as we can to produce the battery modules that will be used as replacements as part of the recall,” Kelly said. “This will require some ramp-up time but, again, we will work as quickly as possible.”
Amar said this is one of the more unusual recalls he’s ever seen.
“They’ve done the recall, but they’re delaying doing the repair until they have a proper fix — I’ve never heard of that — it’s very unique,” Amar said. “Usually they do a recall and they have a fix or fix plan and are ordering parts and will do it. It’s, ‘This is a major recall and we have an issue, but hang tight.’ Life doesn’t hang tight.”
Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan.
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