Chevrolet News:GM Readies A Software Upgrade For The 2013 Volt

[William Maley]

William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

October 23, 2012

General Motors has announced that it will be doing a software upgrade on 4,000 2013 Chevrolet Volts due to glitch which could cause the electric motor to shut down.

Kevin Kelly, manager of Electric Vehicle and Hybrid Communications told GM-Volt.com that problem lies in the software when a Volt is in the delayed time and rate charge mode.

"We are notifying 2013 model year Chevy Volt owners about a customer satisfaction issue. We have received a few reports from owners that their electric motor has temporarily stopped working, resulting from a software anomaly when their vehicle is in the delayed time and rate charge mode.

We’re asking owners to bring their vehicles into their local Chevy dealer for a re-flash of the vehicle’s control system, which should take less than an hour. Until then, we’re recommending that customers switch to immediate or delayed time charging to avoid this inconvenience," said Kelly.

When asked if this problem is in the 2011 or 2012 Chevrolet Volt, Kelly said this problem doesn't exist in those models since the data is only on the 2013 model.

Source: GM-Volt.com

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[G. David Felt]

Sucks but at least it was caught early and should not be much of an issue. To bad OnStar could not push this out to update the car and fix the issue or they send a self installing USB fob to be plugged in and it flashes the system. Would be much better than a stop at the local dealer again.

[Drew Dowdell]

dfelt, I asked some GM folks about this ability when I was at an event with Buick. They actually can do what you suggest, but as this is their first fleet wide software update, they want it to happen with a tech standing next to the car as a "just in case" measure especially since it is already a customer satisfaction issue. Pushing down an update to the Pandora app, I don't think they would have the cars come into the dealers as it isn't a big deal if Pandora doesn't run for a day till another update gets pushed.