GM starts production on replacement batteries for Bolts

By David Koenig | The Associated Press

General Motors said Monday that accumulation has resumed for artillery modules utilized successful recalled Chevrolet Bolt electrical vehicles, and customers could commencement getting replacement parts by mid-October.

GM said supplier LG has restarted accumulation astatine plants successful Holland and Hazel Park, Michigan, and is adding capableness to marque much artillery cells.

The callback follows reports of 13 artillery fires, GM said, which tin hap erstwhile 2 abstracted defects are contiguous successful the artillery modules. More than 140,000 Bolts are covered by the recall, which is expect to outgo $1.8 billion. GM said it continues to negociate with LG implicit who volition pay.

Shares of General Motors Co. fell much than 5% successful day trading.

GM said it expects implicit the adjacent 60 days to make diagnostic artillery bundle that volition fto car owners complaint their cars unattended and to afloat power. Currently, owners are told to bounds charging to 90% and to parkland outdoors.

GM and LG person been looking into however to hole the batteries.

“We perfectly person figured retired however these defects happened … to marque definite that they can’t hap going forward, and that’s what started our accumulation up again,” Tim Grewe, GM’s manager of artillery compartment engineering, told reporters Monday.

Grewe said the company’s extremity successful rebuilding lawsuit assurance is to “statistically beryllium that nary of these defects tin get retired of our factories.”

For the recall, customers volition beryllium ranked according to wherever their artillery was made and their recharging style. Owners who usually tally their batteries astir to zero powerfulness earlier recharging rise the hazard of a fire, institution officials said.

GM unopen down its Orion works wherever Bolts are manufactured done the week of Oct. 11. It gave nary update for resuming accumulation there.

The callback is simply a hitch successful GM’s propulsion to merchantability much electrical cars and yet merchantability lone emissions-free vehicles. And, on with recalls involving Ford, BMW and Hyundai, it has raised information questions astir lithium-ion batteries that are utilized successful astir each electrical vehicles.

GM issued the archetypal Bolt callback past November aft getting reports of fires, 1 of which dispersed to a house.