Our Chevy Blazer EV Has 23 Problems After Only 2 Months

With only 1,600 miles on the odometer, our long-term Blazer EV has been at the dealer for more than two weeks

written by Nick Yekikian^{Senior News Editor
Nick Yekikian has worked in the automotive industry since 2019. He has written close to a thousand car-related articles and tested and reviewed more than 200 vehicles over the course of his career. Nick is the Senior News Editor at Edmunds and has also contributed to MotorTrend, Automobile Magazine and Super Street. When Nick isn't zipping around town in his latest used-car find, he's probably making digital art in Photoshop or playing disc golf with friends.}
12/20/2023
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We bought a 2024 Chevy Blazer EV for our long-term fleet, and things haven't been going well.
A diagnostics check revealed 23 fault codes, none of which showed up on the dashboard.
As of this writing, it's been at the dealership for two weeks.

Update, Dec. 22: Chevrolet has officially issued a stop-sale for the 2024 Blazer EV and will be rolling out a major software update to fix the problems we outline below.

It’s always frustrating to see a warning light on your car’s dashboard. So imagine how we felt when we got eight different warning messages from our long-term 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV over the course of one day. Now consider that our Blazer EV, which we bought less than two months ago, has fewer than 2,000 miles on its odometer. In just one trip from Los Angeles to San Diego and back, our Blazer EV went from perfectly fine to totally on the fritz. And that's only the beginning.

The recent trip from Los Angeles to San Diego — to attend a media event for the Blazer EV, funnily enough — started uneventfully. But then the window switches refused to work. And then the infotainment display completely melted down, stuck in an infinite loop of shutting off, turning on, displaying a map centered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and turning back off again. It did this until we pulled off the freeway and restarted the car. All was well after the reset, but an hour later, it happened again.

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Edmunds long-term 2024 Blazer EV interior

Then things got worse. Closer to home, numerous errors messages popped up: "service vehicle soon," "service high-voltage system" and "service 12-volt system." Cool. Later that day, after shutting off the Blazer EV and letting it chill out for a while, we started the Chevy and were greeted with a blank infotainment screen (again), and yet another error that read, "unable to charge — service charging system." This, despite the fact that the car wasn't plugged in. At that point, the Blazer displayed a little turtle icon and showed, "reduced acceleration — drive with care." Then one-pedal driving stopped working, and auto hold was no longer available.

Considering this all occurred over the span of about 24 hours, we knew we had to get the Blazer into service. But the next day, none of the error messages displayed. A bit flummoxed, we took our Blazer EV to the dealership to see if all of this was a red herring or if something really was wrong. What we got back from the dealer was alarming: the single longest list of major faults we at Edmunds have ever seen on a new car.

As of this writing, our Blazer EV has 23 different issues that need fixing, more than a few of which we consider serious. The car has been at the dealer for two weeks so far, and we still don't know when or how the fixes, repairs or updates will be implemented. The dealership has told us that an engineer from GM and a technician from a different dealership have been working on the Blazer, but we haven't heard specifics on what it is they're working on and still don't have an estimate of how long it will take until everything is resolved. Credit where it's due though, we appreciate that Chevrolet has worked to bring in support from two people who don't normally work at that dealership to try and help solve our Blazer's problems. We'll update this story as soon as we know more. In the meantime, let's take a look at verbatim list of everything that's wrong.

All of our Blazer EV's faults

Short Range Radar Rear Sensor – Middle
Body Control Module (Lost Communication with Rear Side Door Window Switch – Left)
Body Control Module (Lost Communication with Rear Side Door Window Switch – Right)
Drive Motor Control Module
Drive Motor Control Module (Lost Communication with Serial Data Gateway Module on CAN Bus 2)
Drive Motor Control Module 2 (Lost Communication with Serial Data Gateway Module on CAN Bus 2)
Radio (Head-up Display, General Electrical Malfunction)
Battery Energy Control Module (Lost Communication with Serial Data Gateway Module on CAN Bus 2)
Side Obstacle Detection Control Module – Right
Radio (Invalid Data Received from Serial Data Gateway Module)
Body Control Module (Invalid Data Received from Serial Data Gateway Module)
Driver Seat Adjuster Memory Module
Side Obstacle Detection Control Module – Left
Radio
Body Control Module
Brake System Control Module (Lost Communication with Radio on CAN Bus 5)
Battery Energy Control Module (Invalid Data Received from Serial Data Gateway Module)
Battery Energy Control Module (Air Conditioning – Refrigerant Charge Low)
Drive Motor Control Module (Hybrid/Electric Powertrain Control Module 2 Requested Malfunction Indicator Lamp Illumination
Radio (Ethernet Bus 2)
Body Control Module (Inside Air Temperature Sensor Signal)
Body Control Module (Windshield Rain Sensor)
Battery Energy Control Module (Lost Communication with Lighting Control Module)

Edmunds says

To say we're stunned to see a list of problems this lengthy on what is, effectively, a brand-new car is an understatement. We're keeping our fingers crossed that maybe, just maybe, we won't be without our Blazer EV for long.

by Nick Yekikian

Nick Yekikian has worked in the automotive industry since 2019. He has written close to a thousand car-related articles and tested and reviewed more than 200 vehicles over the course of his career. Nick is the Senior News Editor at Edmunds and has also contributed to MotorTrend, Automobile Magazine and Super Street. When Nick isn't zipping around town in his latest used-car find, he's probably making digital art in Photoshop or playing disc golf with friends.