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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

#251

Post by SamBam »

gpm wrote: post #248
beamatronic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If batteries are easily swappable with minimal tools, then a lot of range concerns go away as well. I think battery ownership and care needs to be decoupled from the vehicle. I also think the federal government should enforce interoperable batteries between vehicle brands.

The cars shape and structural components are designed around the battery. The cars software, motors, charging electronics, software, cooling systems, etc are all designed for the specific battery. The battery eats up a significant fraction of the cost of the car, and the systems designed around it a significant fraction of the remainder. Asking for interoperable batteries between vehicle brands is like asking for int…

Certainly no one should expect to be able to swap the main batteries that are embedded into the chassis of the car. The total weight of the batteries in a Tesla are around 1200 lbs.

But it seems like there could be a hot-swappable portion of the battery, kind of like a separate "reserve tank" (although it wouldn't actually be reserved).

Some back of the envelope math says that if 1200 lb battery gets you 250 miles, a 200 lb hot-swap battery would get you 40 miles. Possibly enough to get to your next destination.

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

#252

Post by ksm1717 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #235
ksm1717 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s my point, why bother with Bolt et al. when the volt has already established as a clear front runner.

The Volt isn't made any more, for one. And it's smaller (lower to the ground, at least, and less head clearance). I wasn't comfortable in the Volt, but the Bolt is great.

buying a new car is generally antithetical to buying a sustainable car

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

#253

Post by ReGenGen »

JshWright wrote: post #199
eloff wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How many of those are due to the ICE? In my experience most vehicle fires are electrical in nature, whether it's an EV or not (the 12v system in an ICE car can still cause a fire).

Ethanol gasoline degrades older vehicle's rubber fuel lines, This has lead to many fuel fires.

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

#254

Post by ddlutz »

retsibsi wrote: post #43
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.

The article says they've announced a recall, so I assume this advice is for people who have chosen not to send the car back yet. edit: no, I'm confused. From another article: > The Detroit automaker has recalled all of the roughly 142,000 Bolts sold since 2016 because the battery can catch on fire. GM has taken a $1.8 billion charge so far for the cost of the recall and has been buying cars back from some disgruntled…

Some people have gotten buy backs. GM Says that a buyback is an option for me, but I have to wait 5-7 business days (from a few days ago) to speak into more details.

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

#255

Post by seattle_spring »

Alupis wrote: post #50
epistasis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Does Bolt have something equivalent to FSD? If not, why are you including it in the price comparison? Isn't the Bolt also dog slow compared to a Model 3? I'd also assume it's handling and suspension is markedly shitbox compared to any Tesla as well.

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

#256

Post by pavon »

alex_young wrote: post #236
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…

Tesla is shipping LFP batteries in it’s new cars.

I was about to correct you that it was only for cars in China, but it looks like my information was out of date. An article for others who hadn't heard:

https://insideevs.com/news/529228/tesla-model3-lfp-battery-o...

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

#257

Post by nerbert »

smoldesu wrote: post #209
edge17 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this basically what Apple should have done to avoid their throttling lawsuit? Told their customers to change their behaviors?

They've tried that before, it turns out that "you're holding it wrong" isn't the best customer experience.

I still can’t believe they went for that

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

#258

Post by manquer »

dpierce9 wrote: post #215

Some of this is CYA on GM’s part to shift liability from them to customers should anything bad happen during the recall period. Anecdote: I found out my Ford had one of the Takata airbag inflators that was prone to producing shrapnel. Ford had yet to recall my car but they were offering optional replacements. I called my dealer to schedule one and they said ‘you can get in 6 mos from now when we get the part, very ba…

Wouldn't this also open GM to lawsuits on being sold a defective product ? I am sure the marketing materials projected range higher than keeping 70km reserve.

It could also be argued expecting to park 50m from others makes the product unusable ?

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

#260

Post by [deleted] »

pavon wrote: post #249
ineedasername wrote: post #20

That's insane. For (probably) a majority of owners it makes the car unusable if you adhere to that restriction. If I had one then I would have nowhere to park it. Certainly not at work. And at home with once car in the driveway and another in front of the house they couldn't be 50 feet apart. In tightly packed houses even one driveway to the next isn't 50 feet apart. If you went shopping and we're lucky enough to man…

Yep. I have a Bolt. We are fortunate that the previous owner of our house put in RV hookups so during the recall we have been able to charge while parked in the driveway rather than charging in the garage and then moving to the driveway each night. But there is no way we can follow this latest guidance. The farthest we could park is on the street evenly spaced between our driveway and our neighbor's driveway. This wi…

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