OT Chevy Bolt owners, what’s your strategy RE: fire risk?

[bicycletricycle]

Ya, very detached garage.

Originally Posted by benb

You're likely right.

But there are lots of ways for a car to kill you.

I have yet to own an EV, but this kind of stuff makes my detached garage look a little better. One of these fires would take out my garage but not the house, especially considering I live close to the fire station.

I hate my detached garage when it's super cold or super hot and I want to work on bikes or just about any other "workshop" task, but in terms of charging an EV I guess it's an advantage, other than that the electrical work will be vastly more expensive to install a charge because I'll need the electrical trench dug up and new wires run.

I also question how much "GM doesn't really care about EVs" is part of this. The Bolt is pretty good but it still feels like GM doesn't really care and just built it to get a start and to game their emissions credits and fleet fuel economy. These companies just don't have the same skin in the game as a company that only makes EVs.

[bicycletricycle]

I do some work for a metrology company that offers some amazing QC technologies for battery packs. I think they CT scanner technology.

Expensive to do to every battery though.

Those big battery packs have so many small parts in them......

Originally Posted by MikeD

They'd better figure out how to do proper QC on these batteries. Wonder how much of this was preventable? I don't remember a full recall of every model built since the Ford Pinto, and that was an easy fix. If they're talking about cars going fully electric and replacing gas engines, these batteries aren't safe enough. Right now only a small fraction of cars sold are electric. We need better, safer batteries. I hope the solid state battery comes to fruition.

[benb]

Better battery chemistry is really the big hope here.

I really hope Toyota pulls off what it's attempting with solid state batteries. Less flammable chemistry will be more forgiving of manufacturing flaws, as eliminating all flaws is very expensive and/or impossible.

As always the answer is more investment in R&D and not to to just try and keep using the old stuff and give up on new technologies.

[robt57]

We never put cars in attached garages anyway. I do not like mowers under same roof I sleep either. My shop/garage is 100 feet detached. The MG is in there.

The Bolt sits close enough outside really... Inside, not.

Our one car attached is stuffed with the bike shop...

[trener1]

I believe that Volvo is planning to go all electric in the very near future (2025?) so the tech must be there to do it safely.
The other poster that said that GM might not really care about EV's might be right.

[MikeD]

Originally Posted by trener1

I believe that Volvo is planning to go all electric in the very near future (2025?) so the tech must be there to do it safely.
The other poster that said that GM might not really care about EV's might be right.

GM has publicly stated that they want to go all electric.

[benb]

Originally Posted by MikeD

GM has publicly stated that they want to go all electric.

They have to eventually.

Their history is littered with cancelled half baked products that they didn't allow to be fully developed and played out in the market though, and there's lots of regulatory gamesmanship.

EV-1 getting scrapped and not developed, Volt killed way before it needed to be, dealerships not pushing/supporting the Bolt the way the ICE cars get supported.

There's just huge degrees of commitment visible from different manufacturers. GM will go fully electric but not until they are forced to and they'll try to sell as many giant pickups and SUVs with the biggest V8s they can right up until the day they're told they're not allowed to.

[unterhausen]

EV's don't usually go up in flames while sitting there either, most of these issues are while charging, I assume. Teslas are somewhat known for catching on fire while driving.

I know someone who almost burned down someone else's house with an ICE powered car. They came over to visit, the garage was open and empty, so they somewhat inexplicably pulled inside. Then their car started burning. They got it out before it did any damage though.

[MikeD]

Originally Posted by benb

They have to eventually.

I'm not convinced of that. There are a lot of issues with EVs beyond this battery issue. Power to charge them still has to be generated somewhere, which may not be clean energy. Right now, I think hybrids are best for most people.


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[pasadena]

Agree, that time for GM was yesterday and they know it.
The ICE truck suv sales are now seed money to gear up EVs.
Years of compliance ev mentality has killed them. Typical GM.
Excellent tech buried in piss-lazy corporate sludge.

GM should be dominant in EV fleet sales. They don't even have one.
Rivian, Arrival all got massive contracts from Amazon and UPS (dont mention the USPS old-boys club deal by Oshkosh...)

Tesla and others like Rivian have massive valuations for companies younger than Netflix and Amazon.
All the ICE makers are fighting a paradigm shift.

Toyota shifted gears and invested in solid state as well as Apple. So 3-5yrs, we may have the next gen EV products that are not Li-ion reliant.

Bolt has internal battery corrosion issues. That is a full recall. The delay is just negotiations on who will foot the bill and how to handle it. With the chip shortage and battery supply cue years full, it's a big legal and logistic mess. Not to mention the dealerships ill equipped to handle it...

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-i...fire_incidents

Originally Posted by benb

They have to eventually.

Their history is littered with cancelled half baked products that they didn't allow to be fully developed and played out in the market though, and there's lots of regulatory gamesmanship.

EV-1 getting scrapped and not developed, Volt killed way before it needed to be, dealerships not pushing/supporting the Bolt the way the ICE cars get supported.

There's just huge degrees of commitment visible from different manufacturers. GM will go fully electric but not until they are forced to and they'll try to sell as many giant pickups and SUVs with the biggest V8s they can right up until the day they're told they're not allowed to.

[trener1]

Originally Posted by benb

EV-1 getting scrapped and not developed, Volt killed way before it needed to be, dealerships not pushing/supporting the Bolt the way the ICE cars get supported.

This 100%
A few years ago I went to a Chevy dealer to test drive a Volt, and naturally the battery wasn't charged, I said, hey the whole point of my test drive is to see how it feels while running electric, and the sales guy was like, ahh whats the big deal, no difference.... LOL

[benb]

Originally Posted by trener1

This 100%
A few years ago I went to a Chevy dealer to test drive a Volt, and naturally the battery wasn't charged, I said, hey the whole point of my test drive is to see how it feels while running electric, and the sales guy was like, ahh whats the big deal, no difference.... LOL

Yah exactly.. but hey we have a big < 20mpg SUV here for you to test drive that's much more profitable for us!

Toyota and Honda getting caught with their pants down due to over investment in hydrogen is a much more interesting story. GM, Ford, etc.. dragging their feet is just sad.

The whole pickup truck thing is going to be really interesting in a year or two. All the pickups looks super attractive for a wide range of use cases. It's going to be really interesting if the whole contractor crew ends up buying into them, not to mention fleets.

[Brian Smith]

Originally Posted by NHAero

We park ours outside, no garage, and limit charging to 90% and don’t go below 70 miles remaining range, as GM suggests. How much should we worry? Ten fires out of 140,000 vehicles may actually be a lower fire risk than many ICE vehicles.

Are you doing anything more?

For those who cannot always leave the Bolt safely outside because their EVSE is installed indoors, and they sometimes need to charge overnight, a J1772 "extension cord" could be a helpful solution. I used a model from QuickChargePower for years, the "JLONG," and it was very nicely made and durable. It also comes in handy when needing to charge away from home at locations where the available outdoor EVSE is "ICEd."

I feel sorry for anyone with a Bolt having to live with this and wait for a solution to arrive that is in legal and financial accord with GM & LG, but I wouldn't mess around with it. Hope isn't much of a strategy.

[benb]

Originally Posted by Brian Smith

For those who cannot always leave the Bolt safely outside because their EVSE is installed indoors, and they sometimes need to charge overnight, a J1772 "extension cord" could be a helpful solution. I used a model from QuickChargePower for years, the "JLONG," and it was very nicely made and durable. It also comes in handy when needing to charge away from home at locations where the available outdoor EVSE is "ICEd."

Okay, that's really interesting on a practical level, and the kind of thing most of us who have never had an EV would never have thought about.

But if you buy that... do you have to worry about someone stealing your extension cord while the car is charging? How does that work?

What stops some random jerk from disconnecting your car from the charger if you're out charging in public? Do they lock?

Real interesting, I occasionally read some EV blogs but these are practical matters that seem like they are never talked about.

[deechee]

Originally Posted by MikeD

They'd better figure out how to do proper QC on these batteries. Wonder how much of this was preventable?

I'm sure QC is part of it, but yes you can mitigate the fires by better containment like when the 787's were catching fire in the JAL & ANA fleets. I'm sure people don't want to pay for it. Just like the Sony laptop fire fiasco before it, I think people have to change their attitude to leaving cars charging unattended overnight and ensure the charger itself can stop overcharging and or the car alerts the user when temperatures are rising. (ie. not literally plugging it in with a 120v plug)

I only know one guy with a bolt, and I'm pretty sure he's happy. You get a new battery pack (eventually) so what's not to like? But he's living in the boonies and has a horse too.

"Toyota is able to produce enough batteries for 28,000 electric vehicles each year—or for 1.5 million hybrid cars. Per Toyota, selling 1.5 million hybrid cars reduces carbon emissions by a third more than selling 28,000 EVs." Regardless of where Toyota is with electrification, I think that's pretty good overall for the environment. Without relying on cities creating new electric charging infrastructure, they supposedly have reduced a lot of emissions.

Either way, I'm looking forward to more electric options over the next few years.