Got brand new vehicle on sept 7th. On sept. 8th suffered loss of propulsion and inability to change gears. After driving for 20 minutes (50%+ charged) we reached our destination. I attempted to shift the vehicle to r in order to parallel park, however the vehicle was stuck with a message showing an inability to shift. We tried multiple times toggling the car on/off. After leaving for 10 minutes and trying again it worked, however with a service engine light on. We continued to the grocery store. After leaving the grocery store and driving 10 minutes we suddenly while moving got a 'loss of propulsion" message. Pressing the acceleration pedal did not move the vehicle. We struggled to navigate to the side of the road after losing total power. We tried again turning the vehicle on/off being greated with inability to shift message. Eventually after 15 minutes it turned on and luckily we were blocks from a chevy dealer. This was quite traumatic to go through with my mother-in-law and pregnant wife.
2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV fuel system complaints
Page 3 of 3: complaints 41 to 44 of 44, newest first, as owners wrote them.
Complete power failure without warning. Brand new vehicle (82 miles driven). Owned less than 72 hours. Car was driving up a very slight grade at 35 MPH. Dealer diagnosed it as a failure of an eaton manufactured drive motor battery high voltage manual disconnect lever fuse. Fuse was replaced and car runs. Dealer offered no explanation for fuse failure other than to say that it was probably a bad batch of fuses. Identical complaints have been made on 2017 and 2018 bolts so the chances of it being a bad batch are very slim. Dealer also said that there was a technical service bulletin on point: 18-na-225. I am unable to get a copy of that. Chevrolet customer service (1‑800‑222‑1020) says that there is no longer a bolt/volt expert on staff. It referred me back to the technician (jon powell, 541‑245‑2140, medford, or). It seems to me that the problem is not just a faulty fuse, it seems that there is an underlying problem with the electrical system. Dealer will not take the vehicle back; prefers instead to have us have 2 more complete power failures without warning before he will consider the car a "lemon" under oregon's lemon law. This is an unacceptable risk.
Braking failures. After driving the vehicle for a few miles with normal operation of the regenerative braking system, the car was in motion (about 45 MPH) when the car's regenerative braking system was requested by completely removing the foot from the accelerator in "l" mode (the "one foot driving" mode that automatically brakes as less pressure is applied to the accelerator). The car continued to move forward at full speed toward a red traffic light at a normally busy intersection. At that point I validated that the car was in "l" mode and decided to use the regenerative brake paddle connected to the steering wheel. That also failed to engage, and the car continued at full speed toward to the red light. At that point I engaged the brake pedal briskly and barely came to a stop before entering the intersection. Nearly the exact same problem happened a second time on the drive back about 5 minutes into the drive, and after the car had been resting about 30 minutes. The car gave no notifications or warnings of anything abnormal. Many drivers of the chevy bolt rely on the regenerative braking system nearly exclusively for all braking scenarios. Because of this, any failure can result in an extreme hazard to the driver and nearby pedestrians or vehicles. When contacting gm, they said that under some conditions the regenerative braking system will not engage. They will not investigate or fix the issue.
On saturday june 1, 2019 I was driving down the freeway at approximately 65mph. As I pulled off the freeway onto a side road, the "low propulsion" light came on. I immediately lost all propulsion and coasted into a parking lot. I had the car towed to the chevy dealer. The technician was able to start the car on monday but as he drove it into the garage, the same thing happened, sudden loss of compulsion. The dealer diagnosed my car with chevrolet engineering and had to order a transmission, power harness and a 3rd major part. The service person said this had happened to several other 2019 bolts. This sudden loss of propulsion was a dangerous situation and could have been much worse had we lost propulsion on the freeway, just 5 minutes before we exited the freeway.
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