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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

#221

Post by pavon »

tshaddox wrote: post #47
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.

If a Bolt owner without a permanent garage spot can manage, then certainly a Bolt owner with a permanent garage spot can manage. The latter has strictly more options than the former.

How do you figure? Apartments, duplexes, and smaller homes without garages all have less distance between parking spaces than a house with a garage, not more.

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

#222

Post by rootusrootus »

sleepytimetea wrote: post #13

I would think the well publicized early failures of large Lithium ion battery technology (787 burning down while docked at a gate, the various Tesla fires and Samsung Note phones being banned from planes) would have taught enough lessons to eliminate these risks in the future. I haven't dug into the details of the "manufacturing defect" at LG's battery plants - seems like a failure in Quality Control. I also don't kn…

> I also don't know why GM cannot just bring in the battery packs and test/replace the faulty cells, unless the problem is so widespread it affects ALL cells in all packs.

My understanding is that they haven't got a way to easily detect which cells have the defects and which are fine. But that they are working on it, and may be close to a solution.

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

#223

Post by rootusrootus »

notJim wrote: post #52

The flammability of lithium batteries kind of freaks me out. I hope we get to non-flammable batteries soon. Imagine a future where every car in a dense parking garage is lithium BEV, and then one of them catches fire. As far as I know, these fires are extremely difficult to put out, requiring enormous amounts of water. What if the fire spreads to many other cars? I'm not sure if this fear is at all rational. Probably…

> I hope we get to non-flammable batteries soon

There are options already. LFP is significantly less fire-prone, and LTO is even less fire-prone than that. LFP doesn't have quite the same energy density, though it is relatively close, and improving.

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

#224

Post by rootusrootus »

turtlebits wrote: post #182
Armisael16 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM issued a recall for all bolts a month ago.

A recall is worthless until the manufacturer can actually fix the issue. The first recall was in Nov 2020 but my car (2018 MY) wasn't eligible for the fix until August 2021. I'm fairly certain it's going to take years for GM to replace all the batteries.

I expect it is a very real possibility that my lease will run out on my 2020 Bolt before they have a battery pack for it. Almost exactly two years left.

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

#225

Post by clouddrover »

beamatronic wrote: post #213
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are too heavy to swap them by hand

Tesla actually had a battery swapping machine at one point, I think it was at the Kettleman City location. There's no reason the battery and charging infrastructure can't be leveraged for all passenger vehicles. The battery on your electric vehicle should be like the propane tank on your gas grill - just swap it out when you need to. (This doesn't preclude recharging it) Not to mention, when the battery reaches the e…

Nio's cars support battery swaps:

https://electrek.co/2021/07/09/nio-plan-open-battery-swap-st...

You can rent the batteries and upgrade and downgrade the capacity as you like. It also makes it easy to replace the battery in the future if you buy it outright.

They offer 70 and 100 kWh packs now. They're aiming for 150 kWh packs next year:

https://insideevs.com/news/465188/nio-150-kwh-solid-state-ba...

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

#226

Post by rootusrootus »

epistasis wrote: post #35
ksm1717 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price and panel gaps

The panel gaps and misalignment ive seen online for Teslas are still better than the general fit and finish issues that plague every single GM car I been in. Massive chunks of messy rubber foam, obvious joiners, bad internal panels... Maybe Tesla is not as tight as BMW, but it is definitely better than GM.

No. I've owned both. Tesla has quality problems that even GM doesn't have. They may have finally solved them on the Model 3 -- mine wasn't too bad, really, but definitely worse than any other car I've owned (and I've had several dozen).

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

#227

Post by brightball »

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…

We need to hurry up with Graphene Aluminum batteries

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

#228

Post by dangs_dingdong »

weaksauce wrote: post #60
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…

might want to put it into context though... there are on average 160,000 passenger car fires per year and about 360 deaths due to that. i'd like to see that figure broken down per 100k miles driven or per 100k cars of the type but i can't seem to find that easily. https://www.nfpa.org/vehiclefires

Then go break it down and tell us what you find, big guy.

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

#229

Post by rootusrootus »

cptskippy wrote: post #106
Alupis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bolt isn't priced like a BMW though, while the Tesla is. Even the Model 3, with it's base price of $35k, runs you around $50k after choosing a color and adding the FSD package. For a $50,000 car, they are really not built well, quality-wise. The Bolt, with every bell and whistle selected, runs about $37,000, for comparison.

> 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.

> And still lacks an L2 charger

The charger included with the bolt is 240V capable, though they don't really advertise it AFAIK.

> for $38k

MSRP on the Bolt is $31K. Historically they've routinely been available for under $25K. And you know what the Bolt has that the Tesla doesn't? CarPlay. And good windshield wiper controls. The Tesla has some upsides, for sure, I mostly enjoyed mine (primarily for it's speed, however). But at $25K vs $35K, I'd get the Bolt every time.

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

#230

Post by windowsrookie »

sjg007 wrote: post #121
asdff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is not normal. Every car I have owned has maintained its gas mileage unless something was wrong with it. My current vehicle is over 20 years old and is actually getting better gas mileage than it was when I bought it 3 years ago. I do keep up on maintenance more than the average person does tho.
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