According to EV-Resource, General Motors will no longer provide battery replacements for the Chevy Spark’s all-electric variant. The Chevrolet Spark electric vehicle (EV) was introduced in 2013, and GM continued to introduce new models until 2016.
According to a GM district executive, the corporation “will no longer supply it [the Spark EV’s] battery.” GM’s inventory of Spark EV battery packs is also said to be depleted, and the corporation has no plans to produce any more.
With the oldest Spark EV model being nearly ten years old, vehicle owners may find themselves without a working vehicle if their battery pack breaks. GM provides an eight-year / 100,000-mile warranty on the battery pack in its Spark EVs and other electric vehicles, which implies the warranty has already expired (or is close to expiring) for Spark EVs introduced in 2013 and 2014. It’s unclear whether GM will continue to uphold its guarantee and repair the battery pack in broken-down Sparks, or whether GM will offer to buy the vehicle back instead of replacing the battery.
Spark EV users may also have difficulty finding an aftermarket battery pack. According to EV-Resource, there isn’t a market for Spark EV batteries when compared to other EVs, because companies may not see the value in providing parts for a car that’s on the cheaper side (the base 2016 model sold for less than $26,000). Furthermore, GM only sold about 7,400 Spark EVs — primarily in California, Oregon, and Maryland — during its three-year existence.
As GM tries to manufacture and replace battery packs in over 140,000 electric Chevy Bolts that were recalled last year owing to fire hazards, it’s possible that GM just lacks the bandwidth to develop battery pack replacements for the Spark EV. GM only recently resumed production of the Bolt EV after a several-month hiatus, and it also recently announced plans to discontinue the non-electric version of the Chevy Spark later this year.
