GM Advises Bolt Owners to Park 50 feet Away From Other Cars

It takes a lot of energy to propel an automobile a few hundred miles down the road. I think I will stick with storing this energy in a sealed tank of gasoline. Often, simplicity is safest.

Just sayin'.

The 12 volt battery in your car contains enough energy, when combined with all the other flamible materials in your car, to ignite a fire.

True,but the flames are not nearly impossible to extinguish.

There are engines with magnesium in the engine block,but a metal fire can be put out

with graphite,Type M fire extinguishers,which robs the fire of heat.

Lithium battery fires are much more difficult to handle.

A lit cigarette can do the same.

Government Motors at their very best!

Great Engineering!

Great QC.!

Have they ever really repaid the bail-out money loaned to them by US?

I know they transferred money from one loan to pay off another,but how much do

they really still owe?

Has the US government paid GM for every one of those M4 and M5 battle tanks? What about the 175 million pounds of forgings used in other assemblies?

Quibbling about finances on an engineering site sounds like you are looking for a fight.

Allow me to rephrase that statement:

Government Motors at their modern very best!

Great Engineering!

Great QC.!

I have bought 2 new Chevrolet vehicles,and both were lemons,with no assistance

from dealer or factory.

IMHO:

GM had good quality once upon a time,and I was a dedicated Chevy fan,but then

they started financing(GMAC) the vehicles and discovered they could make more

money financing than they could by making them..

Their focus left quality,and went to financing.

Good bye good old days of a good Chevy,body by Fisher 1984(RIP).

Perhaps they have re learned the lessons they should have never forgotten about

customer service and support,or maybe not.

I am not willing to gamble $$ to find out.

I am sure there are many loyal GM-Chevy customers out there that are still loyal true

blue,and that is ok by me,no hard feelings.

To each his own.

I simply personally have no confidence in them anymore.

Not looking for a fight,"just stating the fax,ma'm,just the fax.".

Try finding a parking space 50 feet,both sides, from another vehicle,unless you are in the 'burbs.

My sympathies go out to all owners of this tinderbox.

Similarly, I own two e-bikes. Recently saw a video of an e-bike with its lithium battery in flames - and not just burning - every few seconds there would be a small explosion - presumably as another cell ignited. Very scary. To think that my batteries have sat overnight on the floor in my house. Never again. I will be getting a metal storage box, and it will be on a concrete floor in my garage.

(In the same vein, I have no intention to purchase an EV anytime soon. )

...aren't cars supposed to be getting safer? I don't consider this a step in the right direction...I can disconnect my car battery when parked, it doesn't need to be charging all night....and in fact I do....

The US typically has over 170,000 vehicle fires every year. About a dozen of these fires were a Chevy Bolt going up in flames.

I see this recall as GM being properly diligent in using this newer technology.

Do you remember the Ford Pinto?

There are over 280 million vehicles on the roads in the USA.

170,000 fires.

That's about .06% or 6 per 10000

How many Bolts?How many fires? What percent of Bolts caught fire?

How many vehicles caught fire in their garage,not running?

They should have named the cars NUTS instead of Bolts.

I do not hate Chevrolet,I pity them It is like watching an old friend slowly pass away.

All of the good engineers have retired,and the penny pinching accountants have

taken over,focused on quarterly returns and not looking far ahead.

"As long as we make money in this quarter,the annual will look out for itself."

Remember,it was the accountants that sank the Titanic.

That is the main reason foreign cars are overtaking American brands in car sales.

Ironic that we taught the Japanese how to build cars,and now theirs are, IMHO,

better built and more reliable than ours.

Many Japanese cars are built in the USA,by American workers,so it is not the

workers to blame,it is management.

Those numbers are in the link I provided. A dozen fires happened in Chevy Bolts. 68,000 Bolts are being recalled.

12*100%/68,000≅0.017% or under 2 per 10,000

I admit that the article is a bit vague on the fire total by saying "a dozen" but unless it is greater than 3 dozen the Chevy Bolt self ignites less often.

GM is doing a good job.

I dislike many things the American motor companies, particularly GM, have done in the past few decades but this electric vehicle and the response to these battery fires are not one of my disappointments.

Do you have any info on whether the electric utilities are ready for the additional demand of electric vehicles? Generating capacity? Transmission capacity?

What are ya kidding, everyone is facing rolling blackouts now due to solar and wind closing down the reliable sources of generation we had...We really did a hard 180° from drill baby drill...and you ask if we can handle double the load? We can't even handle the load we have now....Natural gas is now up over 150% over the past year and energy costs are skyrocketing everywhere...We traded a cheap reliable source of energy for a more expensive less reliable source....

https://news.google.com/search?for=rolling+blackouts&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/natural-gas

And what about the folks that don't know about the 50 feet and park right next to you?

Attention Bolt owners!! On sale now....

Here is a sign that could be put on the sides and bumpers just to be on the safe side

from liability.

Remember,GM advised you,which opens a liability escape hatch for them.

IMHO:This should be posted above the entrance of all GM dealers.

The signs would need to be large to be read from <...50 feet...>, especially with the miserable 20/20 visual acuity standard prevailing; other countries use 6/6, which is a lot sharper.

So if you wanted to park 2 Bolts side by side in a parking lot,you would need 150 feet of space?

Leave the Bolt at home and take the bus. Although, they could go to work on a egg.

Your age is showing!

Not at all, my sense of humour is old older than me. I got hand me down bones and body parts as a kid.

But 6/6 is a lot closer, hence the sharpness.

Scary! Wasn't there another Chevy electric car that they bought them all back? I wonder if acting president Biden knows about this. A few Tesla electric cars have caught on fire too.

This may be the answer to the fires.

https://www.industrytap.com/sugar-powered-battery-performs-5-times-better-than-a-lithium-ion-battery/60177

Very impressive if it works in production.

But why take a decade to bring it to market if it's that superior.

High energy capacity battery technology is new, less then 20 years old. Think back 200 years. How many steam boiler explosions happened before manufacturing methods and standards were developed and established to make steam power safe?

High energy capacity battery technology

Now, consider solar panels needing storage batteries because of their intermittency. Will those batteries be the same type, lithium, as the Bolt? Will solar panel power storage facilities also be subject to fire???

For stationary applications, it's hard to beat the economic value of good old Pb-acid flooded cells. Weight and volume are usually not a primary concern and the risks with these cells are well-known and generally easily mitigated. They're happiest when you don't take them less than 50% capacity.

If weight and size are not the primary concern,the Nickle/Iron Battery is the way to go.Invented over 100 years ago by T Edison it is still a viable backup battery.

They are normally sold as individual cells,so a rack of them will normally be required.

It can tolerate total discharge,will not freeze(-22F to 140F),and has a guarantee of 10 years or more.

(approximately 11000 cycles with daily use= 30 years ) @80%DOD.)

If they do happen to freeze,the cells are not damaged.

Charge rates from C2- C6

These are used in remote facilities where reliability is key,and replacement is very difficult.

If I were installing a solar or wind supplement,or backup, this is the way I would go.

Sounds to me the GM Bolt is a Flash Car not to have.

And all that stored electric going to waste.

"More than 6.5 million vehicles are under recall because they could catch fire at any moment. While that is alarming, what may be more disturbing are the vehicles at risk that are not included in the massive recall.

Imagine driving down the road and your car starts to fill up with smoke, and then with no warnings or signals, it goes up in flames. It is happening repeatedly to dozens of Hyundai and Kia cars and SUVs. Some drivers say the carmaker isn’t doing enough to warn drivers of the danger."....

https://www.click2houston.com/consumer/2021/06/21/millions-of-vehicles-are-at-risk-of-catching-fire-is-yours-one-of-them/

"10 Most Recalled Cars Ever (Numbers Don’t Lie)

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, some 400 cars go up in flames in the US daily, or rather, one vehicle in the US burns every 3.6 minutes every day. Crazy, right? If you think so too, here go the ten most fire-prone vehicles in the recent history of automobiles. And some of them still sold like hotcakes, if you pardon the pun."...

https://www.hotcars.com/cars-prone-vehicle-fires/

..."Car fires; we've all seen them. Small flames that escalate quickly to engulf the vehicle and turn it into a blackened hull beside the road. It is horrifying to witness and unimaginable to experience. It is estimated that 17 car fires occur each hour in the United States. Electrical and mechanical failures are a factor in two-thirds of these disasters.

While you may not have experienced a car fire, here are some things every driver should know:

Common Reasons Cars Catch Fire

Many of the cars with recalls catch fire because of faulty manufacturing or a design flaw. Not every car with a fault will burst into flames, but you are at a higher risk while driving a flawed vehicle. There are several reasons any car can catch fire.

• Forgetting flammable materials under the hood like rags or paper towels used for cleaning are a serious danger.
• Overheated brakes can cause tires and brake pads to catch fire.
• Lack of maintenance can cause rubber hoses and seals to wear out and leak flammable liquids.
• Modifications can be dangerous. Cheap parts or careless labor can result in disaster."...

So we have to separate out the self caused fires and focus on the manufacturing defect fires...

https://www.normantaylor.com/blog/2018/november/cars-most-likely-to-catch-fire/

Update...

IMHO:

Looking into my Crystal Ball,made from a single Unobtainium Crystal:(It has to be real,I bought it on the net).

The battery company will declare bankruptcy,the executives of the company will bail

out with their golden parachutes,and land safely with no personal losses at another

large corporation,prior sins forgiven.

Other companies will hire them at exorbitant salaries,and the beat goes on.

The employees will be laid off and collect unemployment payments,GM will deduct the

losses from their tax returns,the marketability of GM will suffer,as well as all of the

other Ecar manufacturers.

BOHICA !(Bend Over,Here It Comes Again)

(I think I will buy stock in the Kentucky Jelly Company).

End result,taxpayers will ultimately foot the bill for this SNAFU.

Ford Recalls Over 38,000 Mustang Mach-E....the carnage continues

https://insideevs.com/news/536011/ford-mache-recall-windshield-sunroof/