Opinion: Now is the Time to Buy a Used Chevrolet Bolt

You have to feel for the people in charge of marketing the Chevy Bolt. After months of news stories about the company’s first mainstream EV bursting into flames in customers’ garages and various statements blaming everyone from the battery manufacturer to the charging stations to the owners themselves for failing to stick to the NHTSA safety recommendations, General Motors launched a massive recall.

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Hot Tip: Chevrolet Addresses Bolt EV Fires, Readies Recall

Chevrolet has issued a statement to owners of Bolt EVs that could be subject to surprise fires while charging, offering more tips on how to avoid burning down their homes while it preps another recall. General Motors and supplier LG Chem have identified “two rare manufacturing defects” that they believe are causing the fires and are suggesting avoid charging their vehicles in an extremely specific manner until after the secondary recall has been conducted.

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General Motors Recalls Majority of Chevrolet Bolts to Prevent Additional Fires

As we reported about a month ago, the NHTSA was sniffing around the Chevrolet Bolt due to a small number of fires which occurred in the EVs while they were parked.

Now after launching its own internal investigation, GM is issuing a recall of the vast majority of Bolts produced.

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UAW Fire Update: Still Looking Somewhat Sketchy

The Detroit Fire Department has been going back and forth on the July 13th fire at the United Automobile Workers’ headquarters since its investigation began. Arson was initially on the table before being swiftly ruled out, and the probe continued by private investigators contending with insurance claims, seemingly free of suspicion.

Investigators now believe the fire could have been set intentionally, without attaching any conviction to those claims.

“I was told at the time that they did not think it was arson,” Detroit Fire Department Deputy Commissioner Dave Fornell told Automotive News in an interview from Monday. “That wasn’t a final verdict … When I did some inquiries with the press, I asked investigators and they were saying at that point it was ruled out.”

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Hyundai Investigating Kona EV "Explosion" in Canada

Over the weekend, CBC reported a Hyundai Kona Electric had exploded in Montreal — blowing the roof and door off its owner’s garage. Piero Cosentino claimed he saw black smoke coming from the building on Friday afternoon and quickly turned off the breaker to avoid further damage. Unfortunately that was enough, the car became engulfed in flames and popped.

“If we were in front of the garage door, we could have been in the hospital,” Cosentino said.

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New Tesla Fire Manifests in Belgium

A Tesla Model S suffered a total meltdown after being connected to one of the company’s proprietary Supercharger stations in Antwerp, Belgium. While details are scant, local reports state the driver simply went to charge his automobile and returned to a burning wreck a short time later.

Considering the fire department had to totally submerge the ruined vehicle in a pool of water to ensure the car didn’t reignite, the odds of uncovering exactly what went wrong appear slim. But it wasn’t all that long ago that Tesla was pushing over-the-air updates to mitigate a rash of fires that cropped up in the United States and Asia over the past few months. Surely, the manufacturer has some idea of what might have gone wrong.

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Feeling the Burn: Tesla Issues Software Update Following Rash of Fires

The spontaneous combustion of several Tesla vehicles in recent weeks has forced the automaker into action, issuing over-the-air updates in an attempt to snuff out the problem… and smother another round of bad PR. To its credit, Tesla seems to be taking the matter seriously.

The update covers the company’s Model S and X vehicles, regardless of country. Meanwhile, investigations continue into the cause of recent blazes in Shanghai, San Francisco, and Hong Kong.

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Tesla Explosion Goes Viral, Adds to Musk's Chinese Woes

As Tesla feverishly attempts to complete construction of a Chinese assembly plant and kick off production before the end of the year, a viral video isn’t helping the automaker’s reputation in that country.

Over the weekend, security camera video shot in a Shanghai parking garage emerged on China’s main social media platform, Weibo. The video shows a parked Tesla Model S lighting its own funeral pyre, sealing the fate of the high-end sedans parked alongside it.

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Seatbelt-related Fires Spark Recall of Two Million Ford F-150s

As far as safety recalls go, this one’s pretty sizeable, and it impacts a company that’s seen a lot of money lost on safety recalls in recent years. Ford Motor Company has announced the recall of nearly two million examples of the world’s best-selling vehicle to prevent the seemingly unlikely occurrence of seatbelt-related blazes.

The recall, affecting 1,995,776 trucks in North America — 1,619,112 of them in the United States, is the result of 17 documented fires or reports of smoke in 2015-2018 model year F-150 regular cabs or SuperCrew models sold stateside. Another six incidents took place in Canada.

The fires originated inside the vehicles’ B-pillar, with the seatbelt pretensioner as the source of the issue. While the life-saving device works properly to restrain the front-seat driver and passenger in the event of a crash, it’s what occurs after the device’s deployment that has Ford worried.

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Take a Look at 2011-2014 Kia and Hyundai Fires, Safety Group Tells NHTSA

Almost all models occasionally burst into flames for one reason or another, but there’s too many older Kia and Hyundai models catching fire to write it off as a statistical inevitability, the Center for Auto Safety says.

In a letter sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday, the nonprofit advocacy group used owner-submitted questionnaires from the NHTSA’s own website as proof that something’s amiss with certain 2011-2014 Kia and Hyundai models. 120 reported vehicle fires and 229 cases of melted wires in the engine compartment, smoke, or burning odors should be enough to spark an investigation, CAS said.

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Pre-Production Alpine A110 Bursts Into Flames During Top Gear Shoot

Top Gear presenters Chris Harris and Eddie Jordan narrowly evaded injury when a pre-production Alpine A110 caught fire while the duo participated in last week’s Monte Carlo Rally. Apparently the two had been blasting down stage SS17 when the engine warning light came on. Sometime later, flames were seen beneath the vehicle and the two were advised to pull over immediately.

Fire crews were unable to control the blaze and the car ended up completely obliterated. Alpine and Renault have said they are conducting a full investigation to see what went wrong but are currently attributing the mishap to a “technical incident.” They are also suspending all testing of pre-production models until they can determine the true cause of the fire.

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Canada Slow to Realize Something Might Be Wrong With 2008 Smart Cars

Maybe it’s the Hoth-like climate and the urge to do anything in one’s power to warm it up, but Canada has so far taken a laid-back approach to the fires plaguing older Smart Fortwo models. A big part of the problem is that no one’s telling the country’s transportation regulator about them.

The models bursting into flames in the Great White North are of the same vintage as those which sparked an investigation by the United States’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. However, Transport Canada has yet to open a defect investigation of its own.

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Feeling Burned by ABC News Report, BMW Fires Back

Last week’s ABC News investigation into unrecalled BMW models bursting into flames after being parked raised a number of questions, but didn’t provide viewers with many answers.

While the automaker, like others, has seen its fair share of fire-related safety recalls in recent years, the models involved in the apparent rash of spontaneous fires appear quite diverse — both in model type and age. Any fire can have a number of causes, leading many to see the report as sensationalism, especially after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it couldn’t find a recall-worthy issue behind the blazes.

After taking time to examine ABC‘s findings, BMW decided to speak out.

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Spontaneous Combustion of Parked BMWs Get a 'News at 11' Close-up
While BMW definitely isn’t alone in this regard, the company’s safety recalls often contain an ear-piquing phrase: “Risk of fire.”The German luxury automaker has had no shortage of fire-related recalls in past years, but a ABC News investigation points to dozens of recent fires that destroyed vehicles not under recall. The models involved reportedly span the gamut of the brand’s product lineup, but the fires share a common trait. Each blaze broke out after the vehicle had been shut off — in one case, after the vehicle had sat dormant for three or four days.
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After Dozens of Fires, Mercedes-Benz Recalls One Million Vehicles

Unexpected fires rank among the topmost fears of any automaker, and Mercedes-Benz is dealing with plenty of them.

After reports of 51 fires in late-model vehicles, 30 of them in the U.S., the German luxury automaker will recall roughly one million vehicles worldwide to prevent an electrical fault from causing even more.

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