theothertom said:
For some reason the buybacks vary from state to state. People have speculated it's because of lemon laws, even though no one has made a claim under a lemon law AFAIK. It seems that Chevy is using each state's lemon laws to determine how much to pay for the buy back. My state has weak lemon laws and buy backs aren't that much. California has strong lemon laws and buy backs are good. So there's some criteria they're using to determine buy back price.
I've seen some internet discussion that I think identifies GM's tactics in this bizarre safety-engineering-legal-marketing problem:
GM uses Lemon Law buy back values, different in each state as you point out, as a way to
squash lawsuits (there's at least 2 class action lawsuits bubbling up now). GM
can save some money by following some state's cheapskate buy-back formulas, and they still look "OK" in the eyes of a judge thinking about the civil product liability claims. Some states have pretty valuable buy-back formulas so GM is stuck with those particular ones! If GM chose to apply, say, a universal purely linear depreciation based on a formula for age and miles, then it would look bad in some states and too good in the weak Lemon Law states.
If I were a judge hearing arguments for going forward with the current lawsuits brewing now, I might decide that GM is already buying back some vehicles, according to who complains loudly, & according to weak or strong state LemonLaws, which is a valid state-by-state template to follow,
and the NHTSA is handling this as a normal safety recall.
I'd tell the lawyers attacking GM now to
wait a year and find out if more Bolts are catching fire with the upcoming "fix" & the NHTSA isn't already insisting the cars be taken off the road for battery replacements.
But I'm an engineer, not a lawyer or judge, so a legal-eagle chiming in here could correct my understanding.
Buying back does score some points in Customer Satisfaction too.
That benefit to GM probably came up in secret GM exec meetings on this. They are trying to sell lots of Ultium vehicles soon! The Bolt problem could reduce sales by an unknown amount.
GM's goals, offering buy-backs to some, appear to me to be:
1. Thwart current civil lawsuits.
2. Please as many complainers as possible who don't like 1-in-10k odds of having an impromptu BBQ party in their garage happen at 3am.
3. Hedge the risk of the final recall software-only fix not working by taking some Bolts off the road.
They may ship buy-back Bolts out of the country, to places like Jordan who have been known to scoop up Ford's recent problem having so many Ford Focus Electric lease-returns breaking down with age & design weakness, & reducing Ford's reliability reputation here in the N. American market just as the MachE comes out.
