Magical Space Car and Patience

Abstract: My 2013 Volt has been stuck in the shop for two months for want of some parts related to the charge-port which are very backordered. The dealer is trying to source them from other dealers/parts depos but keeps getting mislabeled or busted parts. May is my Birth Month and also when I need to re-register the car and I keep bouncing back-and-forth between “just get them to run an emissions test so I can re-register it and let them keep trying forever” and “just walk in there with the title and trade it for two sticks of gum and a smile so you don’t have to worry about it anymore”.

In February a friend visited to stay with us for a week and change and I offered them the Volt as a reliable daily driver. One day, despite being in the key little wallet, the unlock button must have gotten pressed and held whilst in a pocket so the windows rolled down in a rainstorm. Then, another day, it didn’t want to come out of park until we plugged it in and unplugged it again. Finally, on the penultimate day of their trip (Feb 11th, 2025), they said it started to make ‘parking brake’ noises and driving weird so they put it in Park while waiting to turn right at a busy intersection and it wouldn’t come out and it was blocking the right turn lane but it was close enough to my house I was able to walk to meet my friend and ride with the tow-truck driver to the dealership (the tow truck driver was called by the “hey there’s a car blocking traffic” police officer that showed up.)

The dealer quickly diagnosed it as the charge plug basically getting water damage and shorting out, so that sometimes the charge plug would go “HEY, THE CAR IS STILL PLUGGED IN! DON’T LET THE CAR MOVE! TURN ON THE PARKING BRAKE AND DON’T LET THE DRIVER SHIFT OUT OF PARK!” The problem that made it so confusing is that when the car ISN’T plugged in, the little charge port door is shut, and that means that the dashboard doesn’t show the driver anything. Normally it would ding and bong and show a big message about ‘HEY, THE CAR IS STILL PLUGGED IN! YOU NEED TO UNPLUG IT BEFORE YOU TRY AND MOVE’. At the same time, if the car is unplugged but the charge door is open it’ll do a less aggressive ding and bong and show a smaller message about the charge door being open but still let you move. But if the charge door is closed while the charge port starts saying “Hey, I’m plugged in!”… the drivetrain will try to protect the car and not let the car move or shift out of park… but since all the programming around messaging the user involved the charge door also being open, you get a very annoying ‘false positive’ situation.

The problem now, is I need a new charge plug and charge plug housing and have the service techs basically rip apart the fender to swap things out. And the 2011-2013 volt made a cute little button-actuated charge door that was apparently SUCH a pain in the ass they changed it to a push-to-open door (like most other Chevrolets have for their gas-flap) for the 2014-2016 models, and the housing that holds all the magic for a “ooh, look! I can press a button on the remote and the charge door swings open!” was made with unicorn hair and mermaid tears because they are severely back-ordered. And I don’t think this is just the dealer lying to me because I’ve looked and my husband have looked and are like “Oh, yeah, these things are GONE gone and also they apparently aren’t things you can pull easily off of junked-ones without breaking them.” Also, since the charge door and port are part of the charging system and if that is disabled the performance/mileage of the vehicle drops significantly, it’ll cause the computer to throw codes if it’s not present and in good nick, which means it won’t pass and emissions inspection. For all intents and purposes my car has Achilles charge door.

The dealer is running 0-3 on getting this part. They’ve been reaching out to other dealers who might have a spare, finding some, but one was lost in transit, one was a mislabeled part that wasn’t going to work when it showed up, one looked like the right thing but was damaged in that there was a frayed/broken wire and they weren’t able to repair it well enough to have it work worth a damn… and this past week a fourth was supposedly on it’s way but I wouldn’t be surprised if it too was lost or wrong… or if in trying to install it it breaks or gets wrangled or doesn’t actually fix the problem.

So now I am bouncing back and forth between “While the car is 13 years old, it only has 140,000 miles. The cost of repair is less than what it’s worth so I should just be patient and let them keep working on it” and “This car owes me nothing. Time to just sell it so I don’t have to keep thinking about it.” My usual “I just want to know what’s going on so I don’t have to keep worrying about it” impatience/anxiety is driving me a bit nutsy.

My anxiety/worry is of course, ridiculous. While the volt is stuck in the shop have been daily driving my garage kept 2010 Miata that only has about 47,000 miles on it. It’s not like I am spending hundreds monthly on a rental or stranding Eric at home by usurping his car to get to work. The fear with the first option (update registration and let them take as long as it’s gonna take) is that it might not actually pass emissions as-is so I’ll have to deregister it until it can be fixed and “if I am going to deregister it, I might as well just get rid of it… yadda yadda”. The fear with the second option is that while a functional, dealer-serviced not-super-high-mileage 2013 volt is worth a good bit of change, I figure a busted volt with a non-serviceable charge port that likes to occasionally freak out and become undriveable is worth way less. I could try and ‘up value’ the volt as a trade-in, because dealers are willing to offer more trade in money on even busted cars… But Chevrolet isn’t making anything I want right now.

I guess the thing I am mustering up the courage to do is just call them and go “Hey, the registration runs out at the end of next month. What do you recommend we do?” and I am polling my car nerd friends and loved ones ahead of time to see how they think that whole process might go and how I should handle it so I am not surprised (which, given my social anxiety, would make me act rash/stupid).