Customers who bought the Chevrolet Bolt got a disturbing warning from General Motors – an advisement that they shouldn’t park within 50 feet of other automobiles because their car might spontaneously burst into flames.
GM has already recalled over 140,000 Chevy Bolts made in the last five years because the cars’ batteries have “two rare manufacturing defects” that cause them to suddenly combust.
Additionally, at least 12 car fires have been confirmed by the Detroit-based manufacturer with many more reports being investigated.
Bolt owners have previously gotten a number of different warnings from Chevrolet – warnings that included avoiding parking the car outside or leaving it unattended while charging – but the latest admonishment is certainly an escalation in caution.
The advice about parking away from other cars is being given out by the company’s call center, according to GM spokesman Dan Flores, and it comes after at least one spontaneous Bolt fire also engulfed a Maserati and a Hyundai parked adjacent to it in California.
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In that instance, the Bolt’s owner Jesus Damian posted video and photographic evidence in a thread on Reddit. In the post, Damian wrote, “I more so [sic] made this post so people can understand and see that this is real and it is happening.”
The total price tag of the recall is steep for GM: about $1.8 billion. They expect to recoup some of that from LG Chem, the company that manufactured the defective batteries.