Posts by Sean Nelson
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I'm not talking about the procedure to replace the battery itself (although it would be nice to have the dealer well experienced in that too).
I'm talking about the meta-procedure around how people get notified, which dealers can do the work, how batteries get ordered and shipped, how appointments for the work get scheduled and fulfilled, etc. That seems to be where a lot of the confusion lies right now in these early days.
Yeah, it seems like it should be straightforward, yet we still have a wide variation in what people are being asked to do and confusion on the part of some dealers. I'm sure it'll settle down as more cars are processed, but for the folks on the bleeding edge it's looking, at least from where I'm sitting on this side of my screen, to be a bit frustrating.
It's worth noting that when the new battery is installed the BMS is initialized with a default capacity. It will take a bit of driving for the BMS to learn and report the true capacity. I imagine it could go up or it could go down, probably with more room on the downside than the upside.
Not to put words in his mouth, but other folks who've had their batteries replaced as part of the recall have shown their service invoices which noted "refurbished battery". I have no idea what the logistics of the recall campaign are, but I expect that they have a part number for the replacement batteries that's described as "refurbished battery" whether it's new or not, so that they can use either type.
And it wouldn't surprise me if they've already started to ship replacement batteries which have had new modules installed in old cases. The last thing they want is 140,000 battery cases that they have no use for, so it makes sense to start recycling those as soon as possible.
The important thing is that you're getting all new battery cells inside your case, and if the battery you get does come with a recycled case the work of swapping out the battery guts will have been done at GM with a team that specializes in that work rather than having been done at a local dealer (many of whom we've seen to be relatively clueless).
I'm not a physicist, but I've always imagined that charging a battery isn't really adding electrons to it but rather forcing them from one side of the battery to the other.
Perhaps, but if it takes two weeks between ordering a battery and receiving it then it makes no sense to idle the one tech during that 2-week wait time. Storage space seems a more logical reason, but they could probably schedule them at 1-week intervals and still stay clear of problems.
Of course. But their EV skills are idling.
Be aware that the hose couplings were changed midway through the 2017 model year - later models won't need the new hose because they were manufactured with it. Not sure where the cutoff point was, though.
I doubt it, aside from perhaps BMS software updates.
I was called last week to get the battery ordered and my 2017 Bolt has 105,000 km (over 60K miles).
November is 200 days way. What kind of dealer takes more than 10 days to repair every car they're presented with?
If these are battery repairs then this would be exactly the kind of reason that would cause GM to end up with a backlog of batteries that they're now directing into unsold inventory.
You're assuming that GM is shipping unsold-car batteries to dealers who aren't able to keep up with customer requests. If GM has the batteries it makes sense to ship them to dealers who have spare replacement capacity.
The process by which GM makes Bolts eligible is rather opaque, and how it's distributed across dealers and regions is too. But it's not hard for me to imagine some of the larger dealers with spare capacity.
I assume it means that his car, like all Bolts, is eligible for a new battery as soon as it gets to the top of the queue.
I wouldn't leave it up to the dealer. If you know the car is eligible, tell them and get them to order the battery.
A lot of dealers have ordered the battery on their own, and a lot have had to be prompted by owners.
If I were you I'd insist on a capacity test of the 12V battery before you take delivery of the vehicle. Unless they've been very diligent that battery is probably toast - they'll charge it up as part of the prep and it'll likely last just long enough to get you home and then cause the car to throw a whole slew of scary and misleading error codes.
My dealer called me back at the start of April to say that my 2017 Bolt was eligible for a new battery, that they would order one for me, and that it would take around six weeks. Still waiting after what's now around 14 weeks. I'm not in a hurry, though, otherwise I would have been pestering them.
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