News stories about electric car fires are becoming all too common, and while this latest tale of a Chevy Bolt spontaneously combusting in Massachusetts won’t grab as many headlines as the ship fire in Europe thought to be caused by a burning EV, it could have ended even more tragically because of its proximity to the owner’s house.
But the blaze might not have happened at all if the Bolt had been repaired as part of a recall announced by GM in 2021 when it discovered that some EVs were catching fire due to faulty batteries. The owner of the Bolt in this case told reporters that the car had not been updated. “They had no batteries to give us, so we were waiting,” she said in an interview with WCVB Channel 5 Boston. GM originally announced it would replace the entire battery pack of every Bolt EV built between 2017 and 2022, but changed its stance this year, saying dealers would now only install software to monitor the battery’s condition.
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