The 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, the company’s latest electric offering, is off to a rocky start.
This week, General Motors announced it would temporarily halt sales of the new Chevy Blazer EV while it sorts out various software glitches affecting the model.
In making that decision, the company said in its statement (as reported by Motor Trend, among others): “We are aware that a limited number of Blazer EV owners have experienced some software quality issues. To ensure our customers have a great experience with their vehicle, we are temporarily pausing sales of Blazer EVs. Our team is working quickly to roll out a fix, and owners will be contacted with further information on how to schedule their update. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Just reading into that statement alone, it’s unclear exactly what problems GM intends to target with these software updates. However, Edmunds — who bought a 2024 Blazer EV as a long-term tester — reported a laundry list of issues within the first two months of ownership. During that time, various problems from infotainment glitches to more serious messages like “service high-voltage system” popped up, totaling some 23 different problems.
It’s also unclear whether these issues could effect every Blazer EV, or only certain units.
We’ve had several opportunities to experience the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV over the past several weeks, including a hassle-free drive out in San Diego, California. We also drove the all-wheel-drive model out in Colorado (again, with no issue), though that clearly has not been the case for everyone. It doesn’t seem like GM will keep sales on ice for very long, though the company’s statement makes it sound like customers will have to take their Blazer EVs to the dealer to sort them out, rather than address everything through an over-the-air (OTA) update.
While we will have to wait a bit and see how quickly Chevy dealers sort the problem out, the Blazer EV is not the only electric model to suffer from software-related problems. We had drivability issues in the early days of owning our long-term GMC Hummer EV, while Hyundai and Kia rolled out a “voluntary service campaign” to recalibrate its software to illuminate the brake lights when drivers use regenerative braking (before, the brake lights only came on if you fully took your foot off the accelerator in one-pedal driving).
Generally speaking, one of the largest incentives toward electric vehicles is the reduction in maintenance costs and, perhaps more importantly, downtime against internal combustion models. As we see a greater influx of EVs on the market though, the discussions around reliability will likely shift to focus on software, rather than hardware.
The 2024 Chevy Blazer EV we experienced is a sharp-looking, practical and competent-driving proposition, though the software issues have put a damper on the car’s rollout. What we’ll be watching for, though, is how quickly and effectively GM engineers and technicians can act on their statement to update the car’s software suite to customers’ satisfaction — hopefully we’ll have a positive update there soon.
