GM pauses Chevy Blazer EV sales over software woes

GM has paused gross sales of the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV over “software program high quality points,” the corporate introduced late Friday.

“We’re conscious {that a} restricted variety of Blazer EV house owners have skilled some software program high quality points,” mentioned the corporate in an official response offered to Inexperienced Automobile Experiences. 

“To make sure our prospects have an incredible expertise with their automobile, we’re briefly pausing gross sales of Blazer EVs,” the GM assertion added. “Our staff is working shortly to roll out a repair, and house owners will probably be contacted with additional info on the right way to schedule their replace. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The proactive pause comes after a number of incidents this previous week, each on social media and conventional auto-review sources, have highlighted a spread of software program errors in early-delivery variations of the Blazer EV—a few of them showing to get in the way in which of usability. 

2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV RS

Certainly one of them, skilled by InsideEVs on a street journey, noticed a number of infotainment glitches adopted by varied error lights signaling faults, with the automobile rendered succesful solely of barely fast-charging at a home-charging charge. And a 2024 Blazer EV purchased by Edmunds for its long-term fleet just lately confirmed the same overload of errors, with 23 completely different fault codes, after the infotainment “melted down” and energy home windows wouldn’t function.

A fast search of Reddit and a number of other different boards discovered that whereas there is likely to be a comparatively low variety of automobiles delivered up to now, these will not be remoted incidents. 

GM emphasizes that these software program points will not be safety-related or associated both to its Ultium EV propulsion suite or to Google built-in. Thus, it’s not a security recall, and in all incidents the automobiles have been drivable, with security techniques nonetheless operable—if drivers are prepared to look previous the stream of errors and clean infotainment screens. 

Inexperienced Automobile Experiences skilled one such glitch that is likely to be associated to those reported points. On one (however not each) of the Blazer EVs pushed as a part of a 2024 Chevy Blazer review, toggling one-pedal driving would trigger the display screen to momentarily go clean and unresponsive, with a faucet of the higher app tray ultimately bringing regular operation again. 

2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV

Chevrolet instructed media in attendance on the latest Blazer EV occasion that this mannequin is able to over-the-air updates for all automobile techniques, so even a significant replace won’t require a visit again to the dealership.

GM didn’t have up to date gross sales numbers for the Blazer EV, which is the primary of GM’s Ultium EVs to be made in Mexico, nevertheless it underscored that “the difficulty impacts solely a restricted group of consumers.” Deliveries have been occurring over the previous a number of weeks and totals via the quarter and month are anticipated from the corporate the primary week of January.

With deliveries on maintain, some consumers can also have missed a window of alternative. GM final week confirmed that resulting from last-minute sourcing guidelines imposed by the Biden administration, most of its new electrical automobiles, together with the Blazer EV, will lose their tax-credit eligibility in January—though they’ll earn it again later within the yr.