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Comment by qbasic_forever | Hacker News Reader

So what is a family with a two car garage supposed to do, park the Bolt a block away? This seems like the kind of thing GM should get wayyyy in front of with a very generous offer to buy back the cars as a trade towards another GM model.

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The article says they've announced a recall, so I assume this advice is for people who have chosen not to send the car back yet.

edit: no, I'm confused. From another article:

> The Detroit automaker has recalled all of the roughly 142,000 Bolts sold since 2016 because the battery can catch on fire. GM has taken a $1.8 billion charge so far for the cost of the recall and has been buying cars back from some disgruntled owners.

[...]

> GM has said that when it is confident that LG Chem can produce defect-free battery modules, GM will notify Bolt owners in writing and repairs will begin. Once a repair is made, GM will provide an eight-year/100,000 mile warranty on it. In the meantime, GM has assured Bolt owners that if they follow three steps, the cars should be safe

So they're not ready to repair them yet, but it's unclear whether everyone has the option of a buyback or not. If not, I don't understand how they can be said to have 'recalled' all the cars.

It just means that they've acknowledged the problem and issued a recall notice. To the best of my knowledge they haven't repair any yet and don't intend to conduct a mass buyback.

Some people have gotten buy backs. GM Says that a buyback is an option for me, but I have to wait 5-7 business days (from a few days ago) to speak into more details.

Interested in what you're going to do? If you take the buy-back, going to buy another GM? Would you consider a EV again?

Park outside the garage in the driveway, or next to your neighbor's car that won't return your mower they borrowed six weeks ago.

> Park outside the garage in the driveway

That only works if your driveway is >=100ft long.

If I had a Bolt, I would have (grudgingly) been ok with parking it outside since I could just park it in the driveway. But I can't park it 50 feet away from another car, since 50 feet from my garage (where my other car is parked) is the street, and I can't prevent anyone else from parking near the car on the street.

I'd be pushing for a buyback at this point.

I'm in that situation. My driveway is pretty big, but then again, 50 feet from any other car is pretty far. I already park it about 15 feet away from another car on the driveway. That's my limit.

Whether I will try and return the car ... I dunno. The risk is still on the low side, and it's such an inexpensive little car to drive. Drive's pretty nice, too. I don't know what I'd replace it with that wouldn't be much more expensive to both purchase and operate.

I have a Mini Cooper SE EV -- much less range than the Bolt (110 miles), but a bit cheaper. The range isn't a problem, since it's my commute car, and it can handle 3 days of commutes without charging, and I don't take it on long trips, we have a second car for that.

We almost got a Bolt, but my wife always wanted a Mini and since we were replacing her car, she got to choose. In retrospect, she chose wisely.

> This seems like the kind of thing GM should get wayyyy in front of with a very generous offer to buy back the cars as a trade towards another GM model.

This may have been in the playbook typically, but most car lots are really sparse. All of Q2 production was 688,236 vehicles [1], and there are about 107,000 Bolts in the US [2]. While current Bolt owners are undoubtedly frustrated, GM would really hamper efforts to expand market share.

[1] https://media.gm.com/media/us/en/gm/news.detail.html/content...

[2] https://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/chevrolet/bolt-ev/chevrolet-...

They are following the letter of the lemon law in each state. In some states you can get back all the maintenance, interest and so on... in some states you get back what you paid (pro-rated for mileage). Texas has poor lemon laws, so we get some of the worst deals.

Find another Bolt owner outside a few blocks away and swap garages with them. You park in theirs, and they park in yours.

what about those of us thay have our car parked next to a bolt on the street. 100 feet is 5 parking spaces give or take.

Some owners have successfully gotten Bolt buybacks. Of course with the car shortage that might mean not getting a replacement car immediately.

If a Bolt owner without a permanent garage spot can manage, then certainly a Bolt owner with a permanent garage spot can manage. The latter has strictly more options than the former.

People who live in an HOA may have a different experience, but if you chose to live somewhere HOA-encumbered, that's on you!

Yeah or because an insane housing market prices you out of a single family home

You can also own a single family home that's encumbered by HOA restrictions -- many neighborhoods here have HOA's.

I wonder if there's a map which shows HOA-encumbered property. Anecdotally, when I searched for a large modern home around Seattle in 2020, there was vanishingly little on the market which was not HOA-encumbered, and so the choice was to accept that, or do and/or between: (i) Worse property for the money (space, finishes, lot, et al.); (ii) Worse neighborhood and area (crime stats, et al.); (iii) Worse commute because you're buying much further out.

I have an attached 2 car garage and I don't think I have more "50 foot away from other cars" options than someone without a garage. I could have managed to park the Bolt outside since I could just park it in my driveway, but I couldn't manage to park it 50 feet from another car since my driveway is not 50 feet long, so I'd have to park on the street, and I couldn't park on the street and prevent someone else from parking within 50 feet. The 50 foot restriction leaves out renting a space in a parking lot too, unless I'm willing to rent out all the spots in a 50 foot radius.

I could probably rent a spot from some rural farmer, but it's going to be a hard sell "Hey, I have a car that could burst into flames at any time, is it ok if I park it in your dry grassy field?"

How do you figure? Apartments, duplexes, and smaller homes without garages all have less distance between parking spaces than a house with a garage, not more.

Sell the other car

Edit: or get a rubber car to counteract

They can build a basic covered garage somewhere on their 5 acre lot.

People park their car in their garage?

For the few folks that doesn't live in SF, maybe?

Everyone knows the garage is for storing the treadmill you never use.

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