General Motors and LG are establishing a $150 million fund to compensate Chevrolet Bolt owners after a faulty battery caused some of the electric vehicles to burst into flames. The $150 million is part of a legal settlement between GM and Bolt owners who filed a class-action suit against the Michigan automaker in 2020 for allegedly selling them a vehicle with a defective battery.
In the following years, drivers noticed their cars would spontaneously catch fire, leading to owners to file complaints about the problel with GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. GM traced the fires to a manufacturing defect in the battery modules, which the automaker said caused a short in the battery cell. Some of the incidents took place in Bolts with battery cells made in South Korea, while other fires came from cells made at a LG plant in Michigan.