What’s the definition of insanity again? Edmunds.com is among the few automotive publications that actually buys its longterm test vehicles (Autoblog is not among them), which gives them a greater selection of vehicles from which to test (not all car companies give out year-long loans). That includes many new-to-the-market electric vehicles, including multiple Teslas, Lucid Air and the original Chevy Bolt EV, that they have been among the first to own as well as test. It has historically not gone well. I worked there when the original Tesla Model S passed through the longterm garage — it had by far the most problems of any longterm car to that point. Subsequent Teslas as well as the Air were rife with problems, too. The Bolt was hardly trouble-free, albeit to a lesser extent. One could therefore deduce, albeit from this small sample size, that being among the earliest adopters of a new EV model isn’t the wisest move. Nevertheless, Edmunds is among the first owners of a 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, and it is not going well.
You can find the full post here, Our Chevy Blazer EV has 23 problems after only 2 months, but the headline does a pretty bang-up job of summarizing the unfortunate situation. In short, the car erupted with error messages during a drive from Los Angeles to San Diego. When they took it to a dealer, they received “the single longest list of major faults we at Edmunds have ever seen on a new car.” Edmunds includes the entirety of its list in its post along with a full rundown of what happened.
In the original version of this post, I wrote that “one hopes this is a rare occurrence,” but shortly after publishing I received an e-mail from a person who stated they’ve been having similar issues with their recently purchased Blazer EV. He said he’s talked with other owners who have reported other issues.
“I currently have had mine in the shop of three weeks (owned it five days prior) with no end in sight,” wrote Andrew Kozar. “Today’s update from the dealer confirms the replacement module will not sync with the vehicle and there’s no fix at this time. The car is officially inoperable and worse than when I brought it in.”
That certainly sounds in keeping with Edmunds’ issue. Hopefully, the extra-effort GM and the dealer seems to be putting toward finding a fix for the Edmunds car can help Kozar and potentially others as well. Hopefully.
