Oops: GM Electric Vehicle Batteries Keep Exploding

Just what you need with the really expensive car you didn’t want to buy but were forced into, eh?

GM heralded this plant as a model for its electric car future. Then its batteries started exploding.

Electric vehicleBefore General Motors recalled the entire fleet of its most popular electric car because of fire dangers, before her factory was stilled, assembly line worker Carol McConkey stood in the middle of a teeming factory floor and marveled at how seamlessly the Chevrolet Bolt is manufactured.

The nine-year GM employee ducked under a car frame on an orange vehicle carrier, swung a mechanical arm out and drove five bolts into a nearly 1,000-pound battery pack with roughly the footprint of a bathtub.

Little did she know that soon, the same section of the car she works on would garner worldwide attention for another reason: exploding lithium-ion batteries. She and hundreds of other workers were sent home to wait out an extended assembly line closure.

The crisis involving the Chevrolet Bolt was a painful reminder for the auto industry that despite treating the electric vehicle era as essentially inevitable – a technical fait accompli – significant obstacles to manufacturing the cars, and especially their batteries, continue to threaten that future.

Why is it essentially inevitable? Consumers aren’t clamoring for them. There’s not big demand. Demand for hybrids is up a bit, because they make economic sense, being not much more than the standard versions. And they sure don’t want the batteries to explode while driving the super expensive EVs.

It’s the kind of disruption GM can ill afford as it aims to scale up its production of electric vehicles to 1 million units per year by 2025. The company wants to have a global lineup of 30 EVs by that year. And it plans to shift production away from gasoline-powered cars entirely in the next decade and a half.

Are they expecting to actually sell one million? GM sold 7.72 million in 2019, which was about half a million down from 2019, and that was down about 1.3 million from 2017. EVs being one seventh of their yearly sales is ludicrous.

Today, electric cars – plug-in hybrids, battery-powered vehicles and hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles – make up less than 5% of U.S. new vehicle sales. But policymakers and automakers hope that by 2030, EVs will make up at least 40% of U.S. new car sales. That would be a critical development in the nation’s strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Funny that most of the same policy makers aren’t driving them themselves. What they’re doing is being authoritarian in trying to force citizens to comply with their climate cult demands.

Anyhow, it is a long, long piece on how bad things are for GM. Maybe they and the others should consider what the consumers want, not a bunch of fascist lawmakers.

Save $10 on purchases of $49.99 & up on our Fruit Bouquets at 1800flowers.com. Promo Code: FRUIT49
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds.

Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed

8 Responses to “Oops: GM Electric Vehicle Batteries Keep Exploding”

  1. Dana says:

    It was just before Hallowe’en that General Motors issued a recall notice for Chevy Dolts Bolts due to batteries catching fire. Then GM “urged some owners of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars to park and store the vehicles at least 50 feet away from other cars to reduce the risk that a spontaneous fire could spread.

    How many people have homes where they can park their electric vehicles fifty feet away from other cars, or fifty feet away from their garages and homes?


    A 2019 Chevy Bolt electric vehicle caught fire at a home in Cherokee County, Georgia, on Sept. 13. Source: Cherokee County Fire Department.

  2. judgeroybean says:

    Spose China is behind the radical environmentalists demanding EVs while at the same time demanding we tear down electric power sources such as coal, nuclear, natural gas, and hydro electric dams?

  3. st says:

    FOX NEWS VIDEO – Say goodbye to the worst mayor in American history: Duffy
    https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2021/12/fox-news-video-say-goodbye-to-worst.html

  4. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    It’s those dad-gum Li-ion batteries.

    Remember when cell phones were exploding and catching fire?

    My idea was to start manufacturing gasoline powered phones, but unimaginative Samsung engineers decided instead to re-engineer their batteries.

    I suspect GM and LG will figure it out. LG has reimbursed GM for nearly $2 billion for the faulty battery components.

  5. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    According to the National Fire Protection Association:

    US fire departments responded to an estimated 212,500 vehicle fires
    in the United States during 2018. These fires caused an estimated
    560 civilian deaths; 1,500 civilian injuries; and $1.9 billion in direct
    property damage.

    The leading causes of vehicle fires were mechanical failures or
    malfunctions and electrical failures or malfunctions. Older vehicles
    accounted for three-quarters of the highway vehicle fires caused by
    mechanical or electrical failures or malfunctions. Maintenance is
    important throughout the vehicle’s years of use.

    Fortunately in the past 40 years vehicle fires have dropped from 456,000 per year to around 200,000 per year. Progress!

  6. drowningpuppies says:

    The model years affected in the recall range from 2014 to 2021, and the total number of recalled vehicles is almost equivalent to the half a million vehicles Tesla delivered last year.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/30/tesla-recalls-475000-model-3-model-s-electric-cars-over-safety-issues.html?&qsearchterm=tesla%20recall

    #LetsGoBrandon
    #FJB
    Bwaha! Lolgf https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

  7. Zachriel says:

    Why is it essentially inevitable? Consumers aren’t clamoring for them. There’s not big demand. And they sure don’t want the gas tanks to explode while driving the super expensive horseless carriages

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxgrxl5BRM

  8. Hairy says:

    Thank God that gas powered cars never catch fire or worse explode

Pirate's Cove