When Chevy Dealer’s all over the country had Bolts parked on their back lot waiting for a battery. I didn’t mind having my range cut by 20% so that I could keep driving my Bolt. However, the minute GM got enough batteries that it could restart its Bolt production, I feel those batteries should’ve gone to existing customers rather than being stuffed in the brand new Bolts so the GM and their dealers could be making money selling new Bolts while those of us who have already purchased or leased Bolts are left waiting. It certainly makes me feel like GM has little to no concern about those of us who have already purchased vehicles from them. Their only concern seems to be the money they can generate by selling more new vehicle’s. Mine is a 2020 leased March of 2021, and the way things are going it looks like I will reach the end of my lease before my battery is ever upgraded or replaced.
An interesting situation. I have never leased a vehicle, as I always reckon buying and keeping for as long as possible is more economical, but I suspect as you don't own it, they are jerking you around, so I think you are right. My battery was changed very quickly and easily at the beginning of the program, so I have no complaints. It never occurred to me that lessees would have such a problem. One thing though, the chances of a fire in the old battery are very very unlikely, so you are not really in all that bad a situation. Some people really became bent out of shape as a result of even a remote likelihood of a fire.... You have it, hang on to it and enjoy it while you can.
Yes, I’m sorry I ever allowed them to cut my range back to 80%… I normally only charged to that level… but I occasionally have to drive from Vegas to Northern Utah and for those times I could really use to have that additional capacity. if they had the same lack of concern for all owners as they have shown towards me I suppose there would have been a Class Action by now!
Well here are the latest battery replacement quarterly reports https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2021/RCLQRT-21V560-0822.PDF (2017-2019) (86% complete) https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2021/RCLQRT-21V650-8666.PDF (2020-2022) (41% complete) 64% total have been completed.
I took an ultra low mileage lease on a 2020 Bolt 1LT in April of 2020 just as the pandemic was ramping up and traded in my 2014 Volt at the same time. Our only real complaint were the seats, but I felt it was a small sacrifice to get really really cheap local transportation and it would only be for 3 years. We really liked the car otherwise. Then came the recall and we moved the Bolt from the carport to the driveway for charging and waited to be notified that our turn had arrived. It didn't. Then at the beginning of 2022 I read they were once again selling new Bolts so I went and found one within driving range and contacted them about the possibility of an ultra low mileage lease rather than an outright purchase and explained my own situation. They were very interested but wanted to involve GM in the conversation. It almost seemed like GM was bending over backwards to keep us as customers. Even the finance guys at the dealership were surprised at how well they treated us. By the time we were finished I was exchanging my 2020 1LT leased Bolt for a 2022 2LT leased Bolt with payments lower than I started with and a fresh 3 year lease, taking me out to April of 2025. It also has the window sticker identifying it as having had the battery replacement (and only had 15 miles on the odometer). I never did take the 2020 Bolt in to have that charge level dropped to 80% when I still had it. I figured if it burned down in my driveway, it was their problem not mine and always charged it to 95% anyway. I'm still getting recall notices on that car even though GM bought it back over a year ago. Right after we signed the lease on the new 2022 Bolt, GM decided to discontinue the practice of offering the customer the option of buying out the residual value when the lease expires. I still have that option. The residual on my 2LT in April of 2025 after 36 months of $298 will be $22,500. I might just exercise that option, the way things are going? It's a great car and the seats don't kill my back. Right now we're feeling pretty good about having leased both Bolts.
So looking at the reports and remembering back, it seems they didn't begin the recall of the 2020-2022 models until the beginning of the 2022 model year and at that point they suspended all dealer sales of the Bolt temporarily. I suspect that a fair number of those have yet to even be delivered to a customer. I began the lease on my 2022 model in early April of 2022 just a few weeks (if memory serves) after they began selling the 2022 again. That might explain why relatively few of them in that lot have been completed? It looks like those of earlier iterations have had better luck. It would be interesting to see a report that shows each model year. Looking closer at the report for 2020-2022 it would appear that the car I ended up leasing must have been among the first 700 cars in that category to receive the upgrade, based on when I took possession.
Hot off the Press! GM stops replacing ’20-22 Bolt recall batteries, offers diagnostics software instead https://electrek.co/2023/06/14/bolt-battery-recall-diagnostics/
I had a feeling this would be happening anyway.... GM is still replacing the remaining 8K 2017-2019 Batteries, and according to their battery recovery, diagnostic, and dissection of the recovered 2020-2022 Batteries during this recall the vast majority have been good packs with no identifiable issues and thus had no reason to be replaced. These 2020-2022 packs were also a different design and chemistry from the previous model years so while a fire risk may have been present it wasn't as high a risk as the previous years. GM had many years now during this recall to learn from the pack dissections and train/develop software to sniff the bad packs out and it has actually been working according to recent posts on the Bolt reddit where GM's software has already found bad packs and alerted owners for replacement, sounds like they were able to develop/pin down better detection algorithms specifically for the Bolts pack. This change in the recall impacts around 31K cars out of the original total 110K recall population. GM had already replaced 41% of the 52K 2020-2022 cars implicated in the recall. This same software lives on in all of GM's current Ultium vehicles, now with more fire protection/ablation means (to keep the fire small and trapped in the pack) and a much more robust BMS.
