NHTSA Complaint #11427273 — 2018 CHEVROLET BOLT EV

The remedy proposed by GM for the risk of catastrophic fire is inadequate. I live in an area with frequent hail storms and leaving the car outside at night would subject it to severe damage. More importantly, I live in a high-wildfire-risk area with almost daily high winds (30-50 mph) especially at night and morning. Even if the car were parked outside, it is likely to ignite the foliage and create an uncontrollable wildfire that would consume this entire valley with approximately 1500 homes with an average value of over $1.5 million dollars. That works out to over $2 billion in structural risk from a fire from this single vehicle. Two days ago, my Bolt starting honking its horn at 9pm - one of the fire warnings programmed by Chevy. Although it proved to be a false alarm of unknown cause, the fire department responded with two engines. The responding fire captain told me that due to the wildfire risk, the only safe place to park the car would be a Safeway parking lot 4.5 miles away. That makes the car unusable. The proposed remedy could take more than a year to implement, especially since GM has known about this risk for more than a year and has made no contingency plans to replace defective batteries in that time. I have contacted GM twice explaining the extraordinary risk that this defect causes to my community and asked for a buyback. So far, other than asking for a copy of the title, purchase order and odometer reading, I've had no response.