California Man Claims His Chevrolet Bolt Took Itself for a Ride

(Update: Fred Ligouri from Chevrolet Communications confirmed GM is aware and is currently investigating.)

One Bolt owner thinks Skynet may already be here.

Fresh off it s North American Car of the Year victory (despite being classified as a crossover) and just days ahead of its official media launch next week, something strange happened in Southern California.

This owner alleges his Bolt turned itself on, selected reverse gear, and backed into the work bench in his garage. The incident happened with the car shut down and in Park, both keys in the house, and the owner nearly 40 miles away on business in the family’s third vehicle.

There are no kids in the household, and his wife was inside when she heard a loud crash from the garage. The cynic in all of us wants to accuse the missus of lying, but the owner is adamant his wife has no interest in the Bolt and is happily in love with her own car.

The owner readily admits the car was parked without using the Bolt’s electronic parking brake, as he hasn’t used one for 40 years.

“I did not press the P (parking brake) button on the left side of the shifter.

I did this:

1. Hold the brake pedal down.

In a later post, the owner writes that when his wife went out to the car immediately after the crash, the doors were locked and the dash was dark. When she opened the doors and pressed the power button, the Bolt showed itself as being in Park.

The Bolt is Chevrolet’s first use of General Motors’ new Electronic Precision Shift system. Like other by-wire shifters, it digitizes user control over gear selection — Park essentially being an electronic command to the transmission from the top mounted button. It’s possible that a fault could have occurred there, but there are nearly 40,000 Cadillac XT5s in American driveways using a similar system without any glitches.

GM reps from Michigan have been in contact with the owner, a case has been opened, and arrangements are being made for GM’s engineers to fly out and inspect the Bolt’s black box data.

We reached out to Chevy for a statement but have yet to hear back.

[Image: General Motors]