GM to Resume Bolt Production as Fix Found for Battery Fires
, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. will resume production of the Chevrolet Bolt and larger Bolt EUV electric vehicles in April after the automaker and its battery partner, an LG Group company, found a solution to its manufacturing gaffes.
GM stopped production of the Bolt in August and recalled nearly 143,000 of them, which includes every one the company ever made, because a manufacturing defect at LG’s battery plant resulted in at least 13 fires. The company hasn’t made new Bolts because it had been redirecting limited supplies of new batteries to replace the defective storage system in recalled vehicles.
If the fix to the manufacturing process doesn’t result in any new problems, GM will have put a long and embarrassing chapter behind it. Recall costs soared to $1.9 billion, most of which were assumed by LG, but GM still had to manage customer complaints. While trying to find a fix, Bolt owners could not fully charge their vehicles and were advised to park them outside and in some cases, more than 50 feet away from other vehicles.
Suspending Bolt sales also allowed rival Ford Motor Co. to cruise past GM into second place in 2021 in EV sales behind Tesla Inc. as the Mustang Mach-E has caught on with car buyers.
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