A lawsuit has been filed against General Motors and LG Energy Solution over the defective, fire-prone batteries used in the Chevy Bolt EV and Chevy Bolt EUV models.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 30 plaintiffs in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan this week, according to The Detroit Free Press. The suit alleges the defective battery modules have reduced the resale value of the plaintiff’s vehicles and limited their usefulness. Plaintiffs are represented by Powell Miller, managing partner at the Rochester, Mich.-based Miller Law Firm.
“(GM and LG) imposed limitations on consumers’ use of their Bolts, those limitations dramatically reduced the value and usefulness of the Bolt, the resale value, restriction of driving range and when and where they can charge their vehicles — even where they can park them,” Miller told the Free Press. “You can’t park them inside your house because of risk of fire.”
GM initially recalled 2017 to 2019 model year Chevy Bolt EV models after it received numerous reports of customer vehicles catching fire. It was then forced to extend the recall campaign to all Chevy Bolt EV and Bolt EUV units this summer, with the recall now including roughly 140,000 vehicles. The fires were traced back to a manufacturing defect in the battery modules, which are produced by LG Energy Solution at two facilities in Michigan and South Korea.
GM has released a software update for affected vehicles that reduces the risk of battery module fires, however this limits the vehicle’s usable range to around 90 percent and customers are advised to not let the range dip below 70 miles. The automaker had previously advised customers to avoid parking their Bolt EV or Bolt EUV within 50 feet of another vehicle and to avoid parking it in covered garages.
The automaker has already filed a motion to dismiss the Michigan lawsuit, saying it did not know about the battery defect prior to the sale of the vehicles and moved quickly to address the problem. Plaintiffs are seeking damages “well in excess,” of $5 million in the class action suit, Miller told the Free Press. Miller’s firm is seeking class-action status for this filing, at which point Bolt owners will be able to join the suit.
GM has paused production of the Chevy Bolt EV and Bolt EUV at its Lake Orion Assembly plant until at least the end of January 2022 as it focuses on getting replacement battery modules and other recall repair parts to owners of affected vehicles.
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Comments
Per the article: “[GM] filed a motion to dismiss the Michigan lawsuit, saying it did not know about the battery defect prior to the sale of the vehicles…”. They had a duty to know; I’m sorry they didn’t know but that doesn’t absolve them of responsibility. What do they think? They’re only responsible if they knew about it and covered it up like with the ignition switches? Needless to say the owners didn’t know either or they wouldn’t have wasted their money on a gm vehicle. General Motors should buy-back all these vehicles, park them somewhere until they figure out how to make them work. Then they can repair them and resale them as “refurbished” at some point. Consumers shouldn’t be stuck with something they can not use and can not sell.
Word to the wise…I’ve been watching gm a long time: Never, ever trust them with anything new. One can buy a V-8, body-on-frame, RWD Tahoe with a reasonable chance of getting a good product but there’s no way I’d buy an EV from them. The history of failure with new technology is simply too vast to ignore. Further, as this lawsuit illustrates, and gm’s response to it demonstrates, they will happily leave consumers to take the hit and suffer for their mistakes.
Now there is a lawsuit against GM for the Lifters that are failing on the AFM and DFM V8’s. Man GM is going to have to put all their resources into lawyers fighting these lawsuits. Great Job Mary, keep up the great work.
GM gets sued hundreds of times every month, no big deal, these like most of the others will be dismissed eventually, GM is replacing the defective battery packs as fast as possible, and even stopped production to free up more battery packs for recalled Bolts, The 2017 to 2019 Bolts are getting the latest battery chemistry with 10% more capacity than they originally paid for, and GM is also giving customers new warranties on the replacement battery packs, that is all they can reasonably do. As for diminished Value, Bolt prices have been rising in the last year on the used market, so I am not seeing that.
These ambulance chasing lawyers are just fishing, to see if they can dig up some dirt in Discovery, but in this case it won’t happen. Tesla, Jaguar, Audi, Porsche, Hyundai also being sued for battery pack fires, its just background noise.
I think the Lifter problem is a bigger problem, and much more widespread, but still it’s hard to prove customers have been “damaged” the vehicles used currently sell for more than new.
The latest interim software “fix” reduces the battery capacity to 80%, greatly reducing the vehicle’s range and utility.
GM has not told owners when to expect replacement batteries, it may be months, or years, before owners are eligible for the battery swap.
GM has done nothing to compensate owners for this mess, Nothing, Zero, Zilch.
So, if you don’t own a Bolt, it’s no big deal, but Bolt owners have a vehicle that doesn’t perform as promised, has a greatly reduced value, and may not be repaired until well into the future.
That’s a big deal.
I bought one Bolt in 2019 and another one in 2022 because the salesman advised me that GM had resolved all the battery problems and that the mileage range for the car fully charged was about 310 miles. However, after replacing two batteries the mileage kept going down and now the manager of the service department is saying (After the fact) that the official rating for the batteries is only 247 miles. so when they show their incompetence they just change the criteria, making it easy to pretend that they resolve issues when they actually don’t. A woman called me claiming to be from the Better Business Bureau and she offered to resolve my issues, however, I was able to locate her to the GM corporation. She is no more connected to the BBB than I am connected to the pope. It is incredible how devious GM can be. They treated me like I was an idiot.
They are getting a new pack with more range than the old pack, with a full 8 year warranty on the new pack. I think they are getting a pretty good deal from GM. If they think the car is worthless, they can send it my way.
If you think they are getting a good deal, I wouldn’t trust your judgement at all.
They got screwed.
I’m a 2021 Bolt owner just got the new battery..we get 65 miles less well back to talk to the dealership that put the battery in he said they won’t let them charge 100 percent because its dangerous..I asked why did the company sell this car if dangerous..didn’t know why to bad so sad nothing more we can do its a setting on the new battery
You can set your charge rate to whatever you want, including 100%.
Your dealer is,lying to you.
I bought one Bolt in 2019 and another one in 2022 because the salesman advised me that GM had resolved all the battery problems and that the mileage range for the car fully charged was about 310 miles. However, after replacing two batteries the mileage kept going down and now the manager of the service department is saying (After the fact) that the official rating for the batteries is only 247 miles. so when they show their incompetence they just change the criteria, making it easy to pretend that they resolve issues when they actually don’t. A woman called me claiming to be from the Better Business Bureau and she offered to resolve my issues, however, I was able to locate her to the GM corporation. She is no more connected to the BBB than I am connected to the pope. It is incredible how devious GM can be. They treated me like I was an idiot.
All they need is Ultium to blow up and GM will be buried in lawsuits.
LG can’t make a decent cell phone and have quit making them , but GM trusted them to make batteries for their EVs ? OK … Lol .
This from the company that killed people with ignition switches, and has now been purged of all outsiders by Mary. Nothing will ever change with GM, still welfare for overpaid executives and the UAW
This article is full of incorrect statements… for one, the latest software update that removes the fire risks and has enhanced battery monitoring limits the battery to 80%, but removes the low end limit, meaning you can go below 70mi of range now. Before, the 90/70 mile limit was not via software, but a recommendation.
Also, hyundai has similar batteries from LG in certain years of the Kona with some fires, and didn’t issue any stop sales. GM has blown this out of proportion, and are going above and beyond what they had to do.
Also, look at the rates of fires in the Bolt… They’re way below the rates on internal combustion vehicles, which means a Bolt is less likely to burn than a given ICE vehicle. But here we are.
Hyundai issued a recall for the LG batteries months before GM did.
More “cry babies” wanting to blame and hold GM liable for anything, and everthing that goes wrong forever. Ridiculous! Sometimes, somethings do fail inexplicably. Reality!
If you bought a car with very limited range, and were told months or years later that you should only drive it about half as far, and oh yeah, it might burn your house down so keep it outside away from any other car…
I guess you’d be fine with that because you’re an apologist.
Any new vehicle has an implied warranty, meaning it’s expected to perform as designed.
When a vehicle fails to perform as designed, and the manufacturer is unable to make timely repairs, owners are entitled to compensation.
That is not unreasonable.
The Bolt is an excellent car and has earned its place in the automotive history books, beating the Tesla Model 3 to market by 8 months with competitive range. A colleague has the first Bolt registered in our state, an early ’17 with over 100k miles and no issues. We bought a ’20 last year based on an excellent experience with our ’13 Volt, best car I’ve ever owned. With incentives the Bolt cost us $13k less than a comparably equipped Model 3. It’s not as sexy as the Tesla and the high speed charging rate is on the slow side, but it’s fun to drive and incredibly spacious inside given its tiny size. We are keeping both electric Chevys. The recall has been a major inconvenience for owners who need lots of range. Unless they can prove that GM knew of the manufacturing flaws very early on it’s unlikely this lawsuit will get much traction. GM was slow to address the issue and there were fumbles, but now they seem committed to making things right. It seems LG is footing the bill as they should. GM & LG MUST get this right or they risk losing public confidence altogether.
I am on my 2nd Bolt. It is an exceptional people mover and that is probably what my wife likes most about it. GM is totally taking care of the customer and initiated the recall so NHTSA didn’t have to do so. This article, in my opinion, and I have a 2021 Bolt is inaccurate and sensationalistic.
GM should just keep gouging people for the crappy ice vehicles they are making now, and let tesla, Ford, and Toyota take care of the EV space before they kill more people
How can this be a serious comment?
Wow, rough anti-gm crowd. In my humble opinion as long as gm makes good to follow up with a new 2022 MSRP swap for my 2019 Bolt with the Korean battery (I’ll know within a month) I won’t pursue joining any lawsuits. Poop happens nothing complex as an auto is perfect. Besides if you are a regular reader of this column you are probably quite aware that gm rarely loses a lawsuit. And the few times that they actually did lose a lawsuit only the shyster lawyers made out.
No big deal unless it’s your car! No big deal is a stupid statement.
It is my car. The failure rate is about 14 out of 140,000 units so 0.01%. That’s one hundredth of a percent of the mathematically challenged. eSurance says the odds you will be in a car accident are 0.39/1000 miles driven. That’s 40X higher / 1000 miles driven than the Bolt BEFORE adjusting the Bolt failure rate DOWN for miles driven. Bottom line, if you can tolerate the risk of driving, you can definitely tolerate the risk of driving a Bolt BEFORE the fix.
CarMax gave me $1k more than I paid for my 2020 Bolt. They don’t seem too worried about it. I reasoned though that there’s too much uncertainty about when and how my vehicle would be repaired or whether it even needs a repair and with reduced utility due to all the limitations I should just get a different EV. Who knows. The one i got might develop a problem. My former EV required a $5k repair. You’re basically exchanging one set of problems with ICE cars for another with EVs.
Maybe they can declare bankruptcy and weasel out of this one too
30 plaintiffs X $40,000 per Bolt = $1,200,000. Hmmm? $5 Million or more? Sounds like ambulance chasing on a grand scale.
This article is pure stupidity… Do you sue LG or SAMSUNG for a cell phone fire… No it’s the idiot that used the wrong plug for the charger! As far as EV cars go if there is no need to charge it then don’t leave it plugged in all night! Cars have problems like people and GM is doing all they can to make things right. Bolts have not gone down in value they hold a pretty good price used, Telsa has fires to but like Hyundai they are the “darling” of automotive press shoving false propaganda down people’s throats… Some here mentioned Toyota ha ha remember the gas pedal issues and great Toyota said it was the floor mats BS, how about the dangerous frame rusting Tacoma’s, Hyundai was recently sued for ICE yes you read that right ICE engines that caught fire, brake fluid leaking on electric wires causing fires! Also GM trusted LG to make a good product the only way they could have known was to go back in the multiverse like the Flash and then know before hand! I really dislike the dumb American people on this site what happened to you bought it now deal with it!
I have a ‘17 Volt w 77k mi. About the best car I have owned. And quite well built. Other GM cars should have been built this well.
I bought a 2020 Bolt LT with the fast charge option because it reminded me of my i3 but with way better range, albeit less options and panache but in terms of one pedal driving and range a very similar vibe, a little less quirky.
But here’s the kicker. At the time the MSRP on that car was about $38,000. GM had an $8500 incentive. The dealer had a $3500 incentive and because I am a Costco member they gave me an additional $3000 off. So essentially $15,000 off sticker for a total of $23000. And I traded a 2019 Buick Encore and they gave me a trade in that was equal to what I had paid for it and this was all way before covid and the chip shortage, etc. In other words, they lost a lot of money on that deal.
That’s many thousands less than a Tesla, i3, whatever. For that kinda money it is a GREAT deal if you want to drive a snappy electric car. Once the battery thing clears up the battery will have a new warranty and I think the car will be a compelling value.
The only question is whether GM will survive as more than a niche company much into the future. This recall is a major obstacle to overcome. They better follow this Bolt thing up with some very eye-popping compelling new vehicles immediately in 2022 or they will soon be relegated to irrelevance. The lyric and Hummer are going to be far too expensive to sell much volume. The Silverado pickup maybe might do ok but that’s a limited market. They need something that can be viewed as a serious competitor to the Model Y, ID.4, Ionic 5, EV6, etc to have any hope at all and I haven’t even heard any rumors as to what that might be. It ain’t the BOLT EUV.
Issue is that this is just another GM screw up in a long line if screw up. They were turning things around after the bankruptcy and failed epically when they made one of the insiders that drove them to bankruptcy in the first place CEO.
Actually it’s a well documented LG screwup. You bias is showing.
Yes, LG manufactured the defective batteries, but GM sold the cars.
It’s GM’s obligation to compensate owners who now have vehicles that don’t perform as designed.
So far, all GM has provided are letters saying “thanks for your patience”, and a software update that reduces the range of every Bolt.
That’s simply not good enough.
6 of the 7 ev’s I’ve owned have been GM products. I currently own 3 GM ev’s including the newish 2022 Bolt EUV.
I would not normally trust GM, but the way they are handling the BOLT battery recall is far superior to the way they have treated ICE owners in the past, other than I wouldn’t blame GM at all for the ignition switch issue – as to me – it is a non-issue…. Ceo’s like Chrysler’s Lido Iacocca wouldn’t have paid a dime and would have fought the complaint every step of the way – stating – only CHRYSLER made keys are allowed on the KEY RING!
Every single Bolt owner is getting a Brand New Battery, AND getting the battery warranty (8 years/100,000 miles) reset to ZERO !!!! That is beyond generous.
Whatever, they are not supposed to screw up in the first place, but keep making excuses, that makes it OK. Now all they have to worry about is the failing 8 and 9 speed transmissions, all the lifter failures in the v8, and the fact that they’ve went back to building cars that fall apart at 60000 miles
John is just frustrated he can’t see that an 8 year 100,000 mile Warranty and brand new batteries set to zero is not a good deal… It’s like a lightly used car, the lifter failure is being fixed as well and the new ones will have 10 speed automatic transmissions…This guy is behind the times… He must still think a Kia is a Land Rover! Lol
Please give the world a break, all automakers screw up. I mean ALL. It’s how they handle them that matters. I have a Bolt and a Suburban. My last Tahoe had over 300k when I traded up to the ‘burban which is way over 60,000 miles and holding up fine. I have had so many new cars over the last 20 years and GM products hold up quite well. If you disagree, please buy a benz and get back to us….
I agree. Once they’ve accomplished that I think the Bolt is a good value. The Volt was a very nice car.
Is GM still telling everyone not to park them near their house so their house doesn’t burn down when the cars randomly start on fire
Wow I can’t wait to get my check for 23 dollars in the mail while some lawyers pocket 4 of the 5 million
Depends on the settlement.
I owned a 2010 VW Jetta TDI Wagon, which VW bought back.
That settlement was very generous to owners.
VW bought back my car for much more than market value, I ended up driving it for over 7 years for a total cost of about $7k, the difference between what I initially paid and what VW gave me to take it back.
So far, GM has offered Bolt owners zero compensation, and there is no firm timeline for when my battery will be replaced.
GM can do better.
Hyundai gave all Kona electric vehicle owners a $200 Visa gift card for the same recall on their vehicles.