Vehicle was doing highway speeds on interstate 81 in pennsylvania in the left lane. suddenly, the vehicle made a loud thud, followed by rapid deceleration. managed to barely make it to the right shoulder, and at that point the vehicle put itself into park and refused to shift into drive or reverse. warning messages and indicators lit up on the dashboard, and an onstar notification email was received on my phone. was fortunate to make it to the shoulder, otherwise the vehicle would have been stranded in the middle of the highway with no way to move it off the active roadway.
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.
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.