Regular readers of my blog will no I'm no big fan of the Chevy Volt, right from the beginning when Chevy kept insisting it was an electric vehicle when it is, in fact, a Hybrid with very little difference (electro-mechanically speaking) from the Toyota Prius. They lied about the whole electric vehicle thing and now I wonder if they bit off more than they could chew. Toyota have been producing the Prius for ages and there are no worries about battery pack fires or leaks. The design is nearly a decade old now. Yet Chevy's all-new Volt has apparently got some design flaw in the battery pack that can allow it to catch fire after an impact. This hasn't happened just once - it's happened several times now and Chevy are so worried about it that two weeks ago they offered to provide free loaner vehicles to owners worried about the battery fire problem. Now they've stepped that up a notch and are offering to flat out buy back the cars from their owners.
So why the sudden change? Why would a company the size of Chevy, not famous for it's customer care, now be offering to buy back cars from owners? My guess - C.Y.A. I think they've discovered some sort of critical design flaw that they know is going to embroil them in a huge lawsuit and they're trying to limit the damage ahead of time by offering the buyback scheme.
Let's face it, GM doesn't have the best reputation with electric or hybrid vehicles, dating back to the whole EV1 fiasco where they forcibly cancelled leases, and literally stole the cars back from their owners to destroy them. If you're interested in that whole nauseating mess, Who Killed The Electric Car is a great documentary on that very topic.
