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Chevy Bolt Catches On Fire Sitting In A Garage Right After GM Announces Fix For Battery Fires
Chevy Bolt Catches On Fire Sitting In A Garage Right After GM Announces Fix For Battery Fires-March 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:12:21

Image for article titled Chevy Bolt Catches On Fire Sitting In A Garage Right After GM Announces Fix For Battery Fires

Less than a week has passed since for a very inconvenient problem with their mass-market EV, the Bolt: It appears that this fix did not make it to a particular Bolt in Ashburn, Virginia, which burst into flames while sitting in a home’s garage, starting a major fire. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but this is a good reminder that fires while parked are an issue with.

, they were alerted to the fire at about 11:30 on the morning of May 1. The fire appears to have been started under the Bolt, and then spread to the rest of the garage.

and it’s pretty alarming-looking:

Yikes. Incredibly, the main house was saved, and there were no major injuries, though that Bolt’s not looking so great:

Image for article titled Chevy Bolt Catches On Fire Sitting In A Garage Right After GM Announces Fix For Battery Fires

While the complete cause of the fire is not yet officially known, GM has given details of

GM’s experts concluded a “rare manufacturing defect in certain battery modules in vehicles from these production years” led to the fires, GM spokesman Dan Flores said in a statement to The Detroit News. That defect could cause “a heat source or a short in a cell, which could propagate into a fire.”

It’s not known if this Bolt had the software-based fix, or if this Bolt was being operated unde, steps that, according to Jesse Ortega, GM’s chief engineer on the bolt:

... if you have a 2017 or 2018 Bolt you should use the Hilltop Reserve mode until there’s a fix. For those with 2019 Bolts, Ortega says to change the target charge setting to 90 percent. If you can’t make these changes, or don’t feel comfortable making them, Ortega says that you should park your Bolt outside your garage and not under a carport because of the fire risk.

Bolt owners, it’s probably a

Electric car batteries store an astounding amount of energy in a very dense package, and which is at the root of why we’ve seen significant fire issues from Teslas, Hyundais, Chevys, and other EVs. Yes, but the context of those fires tend to be different, with combustion cars far more likely to, um, combust, when in use, as that’s when gasoline is flowing around active electrical sparks and points of intense heat.

When parked, the fire risk is far less, a situation that does not seem to be the case with electric cars.

These fires are no joke. If you have any EV with a recall notice, take it seriously.

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