General Motors Co. may redesign the battery for its Chevrolet Volt to address issues raised after federal officials opened a safety probe into the plug-in electric car. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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“We want to assure the safety of our customers, of our buyers, and so we’re just going to take a time out, if you will, in terms of redesigning the battery possibly,” Akerson told Reuters in an interview.
GM said on Monday it would offer loaner vehicles to about 5,500 Volt owners as it works with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on ways to reduce the risk of battery fires breaking out days after crashes involving the car.
(For the full interview with Akerson, see http://link.reuters.com/fyw35s).
The company also said it would not deliver the Opel-branded version of the Volt in Europe until its engineers and safety regulators had worked out how to deal with the 400-pound battery pack after any accidents.
The steps came in response to a decision last week by NHTSA to open an investigation into the safety of the Volt’s battery pack. A lithium-ion battery pack in a Volt that had been through a crash test in May caught fire three weeks later at a test facility in Wisconsin, according to NHTSA.
In lab tests completed last week by U.S. safety regulators, a second Volt pack began to smoke and throw off sparks while a third battery pack caught fire a week after a simulated crash.
