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GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

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Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#121

Post by sjg007 »

asdff wrote: post #77
sjg007 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how electric cars are any different than mobile phones. So basically this means a 3 year life span in terms of battery performance. Regular combustion cars though also suffer reduced mpg so I am not saying this is an apples to apples comparison.

The reduced mpg is not all that much though, maybe 2-3 mpg nothing nearly as significant as driving behavior on mpg. A small displacement honda is going to have good mpg all its life unless something has really fouled up.

I've noticed a 5mpg decrease with every car I've owned in pretty similar driving conditions over 5-10 years and immaculate maintenance.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#122

Post by micromacrofoot »

taurath wrote: post #107
mabbo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My perception of American designed and engineered vehicles is that they’re really awful, not just from a reliability standpoint but also from a user interface standpoint. For about 18 months in 2017 and 2018, I had a job that had me in a new city every other week. Lot of rental cars. And I started to have very strong preference. I would go out of my way to get a Chevy. Great Android auto integration. Good controls…

I’ll check them out next time I’m looking. Last I drove one it was touchscreen for everything I wanted a dial for, and the IOS integration didn’t work except wired, and then it was also very slow. And of course my experience isn’t universal; it’s really hard to make an attempt to go back though after I’ve had many personal experiences of just faulty electronics and engines to trust a brand again.

The cord is an iOS restriction on all cars in my experience. It does seem kind of silly to me.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#123

Post by Mogzol »

sjg007 wrote: post #55
raman162 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's the 5 second cool factor but after that novelty you're probably just as disgruntled as the fact that you lost 35% of the range for your car. I hope the Chevy bolt is a rare case and stories like this don't pop up with the other upcoming electric vehicles. The new lightning F150 looks very attractive.

I don't see how electric cars are any different than mobile phones. So basically this means a 3 year life span in terms of battery performance. Regular combustion cars though also suffer reduced mpg so I am not saying this is an apples to apples comparison.

With phones and regular usage you are likely doing full charge/discharge cycles every day or two, which is hard on the battery. That's not really the case with electric cars. When you have 200-300 miles of range, and you only regularly drive, say, 20 or 30 miles per day, it's pretty easy to keep the battery around 70%-80%, which should significantly extend the life span.

Obviously the batteries still degrade, but they should be usable long past 3 years assuming regular driving habits.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#124

Post by akomtu »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #17

So what is a family with a two car garage supposed to do, park the Bolt a block away? This seems like the kind of thing GM should get wayyyy in front of with a very generous offer to buy back the cars as a trade towards another GM model.

They can build a basic covered garage somewhere on their 5 acre lot.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#125

Post by lmm »

OJFord wrote: post #99
bubbleRefuge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those are with the car off and at rest ?

Is that actually relevant though, or just an implementation detail? Perhaps you could argue a moving car seems more potentially hazardous? But then that's only learned from extant behaviour anyway?

Catching fire when no-one's around seems like it could go a lot worse than catching fire with a driver present.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#126

Post by cptskippy »

Alupis wrote: post #110
cptskippy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Bolt isn't priced like a BMW though, while the Tesla is. But only when you fudge the numbers by including FSD. > The Bolt, with every bell and whistle selected, runs about $37,000, for comparison. And still lacks an L2 charger, one comparable to the one included with the Model 3 costs another $1000. So for $38k you can get a vehicle that isn't quite as nice as the base Model 3 for a $3k premium.

> But only when you fudge the numbers by including FSD. I don't think this is fudging at all. Tesla's big selling point is the FSD package... and most people select it by default. FSD is nearly all Musk talks about. In fact, I'd argue it's Tesla fudging the numbers by breaking FSD out into a separate line item, just so they can advertise a cheaper car knowing full well people expect to have FSD for that price.

> I don't think this is fudging at all. Tesla's big selling point is the FSD package... and most people select it by default.

I mean even if there weren't data showing that as completely untrue...

https://electrek.co/2021/08/31/tesla-survey-take-rate-full-s...

... then why would Tesla bother to offer FSD as a subscription service if everyone is buying it?

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#127

Post by ksm1717 »

cptskippy wrote: post #115
ksm1717 wrote: post #15

The Chevy volt model as established in the early 2010s is an arm and a leg beyond the next closest competitor in the electric automobile space and this is a smirch upon its namespace

While I don't agree with your statement, I do think the Volt platform was the best Hybrid platform and GM should have scaled it up for their Trucks and SUVs. The instant torque provided by the electric motor and the ability to switch to just EV mode and run silent would have been killer for ORV enthusiasts and hunters.

Ah, maybe it’s just my opinion that a car need not be more than a silent torque machine..

Glad that you mostly agree with my statement.. if the regulators weren’t dragging their feet we could have this “platform” as an industry standard.. Ford f1-volty (:

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#128

Post by thayne »

sjg007 wrote: post #55
raman162 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's the 5 second cool factor but after that novelty you're probably just as disgruntled as the fact that you lost 35% of the range for your car. I hope the Chevy bolt is a rare case and stories like this don't pop up with the other upcoming electric vehicles. The new lightning F150 looks very attractive.

I don't see how electric cars are any different than mobile phones. So basically this means a 3 year life span in terms of battery performance. Regular combustion cars though also suffer reduced mpg so I am not saying this is an apples to apples comparison.

At least with a car you might be able to replace the battery. Maybe. Of course the auto companies have the same incentives as the mobile phone companies to want you to replace the whole thing.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#129

Post by eloff »

philwelch wrote: post #109
gameswithgo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk of lithium ion fire is very obvious and real. But to decide if this is a problem relative to the current alternatives (gasoline) we would need to compare the rates and severity of fires between the two. Gasoline cars also have complicated parts to help mitigate their fire risk.

I’ve never heard of a gas tank spontaneously bursting into flames.

There are about 160,000 fires involving personal internal combustion engine vehicles per year.

Re: GM tells some Bolt owners to park 50 feet away from other cars

#130

Post by api »

Animats wrote: post #42

Maybe lithium-ion batteries in mass-market vehicles aren't such a good idea. We may need a battery technology that can survive poor maintenance less than perfect battery construction, and low-cost vehicle designs. Tesla had to put a titanium plate under their battery. That's not a mass-market solution. BYD is converting over to lithium iron phosphate, which is much better behaved when damaged. Toyota is working on so…

Gasoline fires happen all the time. They just don’t get press.

No method of packing enough energy in a car for hundreds of miles of range is going to be perfectly safe. Stored energy is stored energy and any material with that much really wants to party.

It does seem that the Bolt has an issue. I’m glad I opted for the 62kWh Leaf for an affordable EV and so far I think there has only ever been one Leaf fire. It happened years ago and they have been on the market about the longest. The Bolt has slightly more range but I looked at both and liked the Leaf more. This was before I heard about fires.

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