A Florida Chevrolet supplier’s restore estimate has gone viral after a Volt proprietor was quoted virtually $30,000 to interchange the battery on their ageing hybrid automobile.

A print-out from Roger Dean Chevrolet in Florida listed the value of a brand new battery on the 70,000-mile 2012 Volt as $26,853.99, to which the supplier needed so as to add $1,200 for labor and $33.98 to cowl coolant. By the point the Florida taxman had added his price the full had ballooned to $30,842.15, and that is for a 10-year-old out of date hybrid that Carmax would purchase from you for $9,000 if it was in good situation with no issues.

The incompatibility of these final two numbers leads us to presume that the proprietor didn’t undergo with the job – the print-out was only a restore estimate, not an precise bill for work accomplished. However why was it going to value a lot? Some feedback on-line prompt that the entire thing was a hoax, alleging that the print-out was lacking sure bits of knowledge like an handle and cellphone quantity that will be on a “actual” supplier quote.

However the Again the Truck Up weblog and fact-checking web site Snopes contacted the supplier, confirming that the estimate was certainly real, and was for a battery that got here from a third-party provider. Again the Truck Up says that the provider was Spear Energy Methods, a MO-based producer of lithium batteries to be used in aviation, maritime, and mining industries, however SPS didn’t reply to Snopes when it tried to verify SPS was the supply of the battery.

Associated: GM Refutes Reuters’ Declare That Every Volt Prices $89,000 to Construct, Although it’s Nonetheless Shedding Cash

Guess that Chevy Volt seemed like a good suggestion at first. pic.twitter.com/q57U0gZowU

— Rob O’Donnell (@odonnell_r) August 25, 2022

Countering any accusations that it might need inflated the value of the battery place to line its personal pockets, an worker at Roger Dean Chevrolet wrote on Fb that it didn’t set the value of the battery.

“That is an estimate for a 12-year-old car out of guarantee and for a battery that’s extraordinarily arduous to get, because of the older know-how of the 12-year-old car,” the spokesperson wrote.

“Within the newer EV or EUV automobiles with newer know-how the batteries do value much less. Consider it like huge display TVs. Keep in mind when the primary huge display got here out, they had been very costly, and because the know-how superior the costs turned higher. This battery can also be out of guarantee of 8yr/100k miles no matter hits first.”

The scale of the Volt battery elevated between the launch of the primary era automobile in 2011 and the discontinuation of the second-gen mannequin in 2019. However early Volts like this one had a reasonably small 16.0 kWh battery, and also you’d suppose that there should be sufficient of them reaching the age that they want a battery substitute for there to be an honest provide of inexpensive replacements. In actual fact, Reddit customers turned up a web page on GM Components On-line suggesting {that a} refurbished battery meeting for a 2011-14 Volt is obtainable for $6,880, having been decreased from $9,100.

That half comes with a 12-month guarantee, but when the shopper merely needed to get their automobile again on the highway there are quite a few Volt battery packs on eBay, together with one from a 2012 automobile priced at $3,599. Clearly, you’ve obtained supply and labor to consider, however you’re nonetheless going to finish up paying quite a bit lower than $30k. However maybe most mind-blowing of all, you may purchase a model new Chevy Bolt ($25,600) or Nissan Leaf ($27,400) and nonetheless find yourself spending much less cash than Roger Dean Chevrolet quoted to repair the decade-old Volt.