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

[robt57]

I drove my wife to a DC fast charge located in between house and her work over the weekend. Opened account and did a dry run/charge in case a fault or outage at the house leaves insufficient range for her commute. It is a hardly ever used one behind a business that used to be free, and now charges [no pun intended] 0.11kWh. App shows it gets used once every few days at most.

I wonder if the DC charger [or all commercial chargers] set to not charge BOLTs over 80% without user intervention??

[jm714]

Originally Posted by robt57

I drove my wife to a DC fast charge located in between house and her work over the weekend. Opened account and did a dry run/charge in case a fault or outage at the house leaves insufficient range for her commute. It is a hardly ever used one behind a business that used to be free, and now charges [no pun intended] 0.11kWh. App shows it gets used once every few days at most.

I wonder if the DC charger [or all commercial chargers] set to not charge BOLTs over 80% without user intervention??

I charged my Bolt a week ago on a EVgo charger via the DC fast charge it took me to 90% before I had to leave for a meeting and disconnected. I didn't have to do anything to get it charge past 80% it just kept going.

What I find interesting is I bought my 2021 Bolt the first week of June. Granted I bought a LT version but I only paid $21,000 for it and that included $2500 in dealer add on that they wouldn't remove. I even got a Costco rebate that I thought had expired the first week of May that was good for another $3,000 off. I wonder if GM knew about the recall issue and just wanted to off load the vehicles before the notice came out?

[fogrider]

Originally Posted by MikeD

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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Mike, just because power being generated may not be clean is not an issue with EVs. It's an issue of power generation, in California and Texas a high percentage of the power is from renewable sources...and it keeps growing.

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[mistermo]

Anecdotal for sure, but my house had a brand new, 2 car, detached garage when I bought it. Prior owner had a Jeep Cherokee that spontaneously caught fire insider prior garage. Insurance bought her a new one.

I had a Ford Explorer that once did the same, outside. I renamed it Ford Exploder.

Originally Posted by NHAero

Thanks for posting.

I have been following those recommendations (and in essence, was following them beforehand for battery life reasons.) So far I haven't seen a 2021 car fire.

Is it accurate, what I've read on some discussions online, that ICE car fires are actually statistically more common? I recognize that an EV lithium battery fire is a total loss and many ICE fires don't necessarily end up that way.

[robt57]

Originally Posted by jm714

What I find interesting is I bought my 2021 Bolt the first week of June. Granted I bought a LT version but I only paid $21,000

Not sure if it was you in my PHEV Van thread that mentioned this. But a 9k off from GM was what got me to the dealer. That and a friend with a Premier 2017.

They had one, but I saw the new style, the last 21 had no heated seat/wheel/mirror which were musts. I figured starting one year old already ate up a lot of the 9k, and we got a few good discounts that piled adequately. So the wife got a 22. Oh yeah, she works too hard to settle on a color, and the ice metallic blue made her go gah!.

I backed off when I saw the numbers, she got upset and I knew I was going to need to make the deal happen.

Not waiting for the DEQ 2500.00 and having just sold a 3k Ti gravel machine, then the 8k over loan balance trade on the Fit the numbers worked fine.

I hated going from 23 months left on the Fit loan to 72 on the Bolt. Life moves forward.. I considered just paying it off a lot last 6 months, but the loan was 1%. So I paid down PHEV with higher balance and interest rate instead.

The recall thing really pished me off, the wife doesn't care... until she has do without while it gets remedied.

[Sjambok]

I have a '20 bolt that we keep charged between 30 and 80%. We charge outside and use 32 amps. I read somewhere that L2 charging was the way to go with this issue. I still have charged to 100% for long day trips. We don't charge indoors anywhere so I feel the risk isn't as high. I just hope that my lapsed Onstar coverage doesn't prevent them from calling in emergency help when my interior temp sensor shows above 200+F.

[jm714]

Just got this from Chevy/GM:

At Chevrolet it is our mission to keep you, our customer, at the center of everything we do. To that end, we are writing you today to hear from Chevrolet directly about your vehicle. General Motors is voluntarily expanding the current Chevrolet Bolt EV recall to cover the remaining 2019 and all 2020-2022 model year vehicles, including the Bolt EUV. In rare circumstances, LG batteries supplied to GM for these vehicles may have manufacturing defects which increase the risk of fire. Out of an abundance of caution, GM will replace defective lithium ion battery modules in Chevrolet Bolt EVs and EUVs with new modules as parts become available. To provide you with peace of mind, your battery will receive an 8-year/100,000-mile limited parts warranty.1
We are working aggressively with LG to increase production as soon as possible. We will notify you when replacement parts are ready. For your safety we are asking for you to immediately do the following:
1. Set your vehicle to a 90% state of charge limitation using Target Charge Level mode. Instructions on how to do this are available at www.chevy.com/boltevrecall. If you are unable to successfully make these changes, or do not feel comfortable making these changes, GM is asking you to visit your dealer to have these adjustments completed.
2. Charge your vehicle more frequently and avoid depleting your battery below approximately 70 miles (113 kilometers) of remaining range, where possible.
3. Park your vehicle outside immediately after charging and do not leave your vehicle charging indoors overnight.

[Geeheeb]

Interesting. I love my Volt and want a Bolt EUV if I could find one.

[Brian Smith]

Originally Posted by benb

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?

It came with a small keyed padlock intended to keep it locked to the vehicle being charged. I consider this more of a measure to keep someone from interrupting your charging session than protecting anything from theft. Regarding theft, we're talking about an inexpensive silicon-free piece of cable hardware which is only useful for an EV owner...it's not exactly a highly effective theft target. Some may worry about it, I didn't. If I felt insecure about using the extension, I could always have exercised the option to wait until I didn't need it. It's possible to both charge on the extension and protect the equipment from theft: park, plug in, start charging, and sit in the car while waiting for the owner of the blocking vehicle to return.

Originally Posted by benb

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

Actual EV ownership can be a fairly strong antidote to what qualifies as press-worthy. Remember, perhaps analogous, all those cautionary warnings about how bad it'll be when othe electronic shifting drivetrains we might purchase have their batteries run down? There can be issues. Behaviour modification ensues and the hardware evolves.

[AngryScientist]

another burner

[username]

Yeah, that's my car. I decided to cut out the middleman. I set it on fire myself.

[NHAero]

Yikes, at least it didn't take the house with it.

I dunno - so far, maybe I'm a candidate for a Darwin award, but I'm gonna keep using ours, follow their guidance, and hope GM/LG really do work out a fix. Our charger and parking area are outdoors 30-40 feet from the house. It's a great car for my wife, whose daily driving as a Hospice therapist varies a lot, but is well within the range of the Bolt. At this point, we let it go down to about 150 miles of range, and then charge it while we're awake back up to 90% of full, which is about 4 hours of charge time.

Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot, but I think riding my bike daily is far more risky.

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

another burner

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by NHAero

Yikes, at least it didn't take the house with it.

I dunno - so far, maybe I'm a candidate for a Darwin award, but I'm gonna keep using ours, follow their guidance, and hope GM/LG really do work out a fix. Our charger and parking area are outdoors 30-40 feet from the house. It's a great car for my wife, whose daily driving as a Hospice therapist varies a lot, but is well within the range of the Bolt. At this point, we let it go down to about 150 miles of range, and then charge it while we're awake back up to 90% of full, which is about 4 hours of charge time.

Feel free to tell me I'm an idiot, but I think riding my bike daily is far more risky.

i dont know if you saw the article, but this dumbass was charging it in his garage and the firemen were able to drag it out before it burned his garage down.

i think your use case sounds safe enough, as long as it charges far enough away from your home structure. i wonder if some type of remote heat sensor that alarms in your house might be prudent, just so you would have all hands on deck and not be caught by surprise if things started heating up?

question: if it burns and is totalled during this recall period, will chevy eat the cost or will your car insurance have to cover it?

[unterhausen]

Somehow I don't think the car fire that complicated my ride today was a bolt or a Tesla
https://www.facebook.com/15199387586...2448716916628/

And the disruption due to that was in addition to the crime wave of people coming into town for the football game tomorrow.