It was just a glitch. It was an annoying glitch, but just a glitch nonetheless. No matter how hard or how often I pressed the magic button on our Chevy Bolt’s door handle it wouldn’t unlock.
Since getting our first EV seven years ago, we’ve become accustomed to just touching the door handle to unlock the car door. No need to dig into a pants pocket or purse to retrieve a metal key. No need even to retrieve the fob and press the unlock button. Just walk up, touch the door handle—in the right spot of course—and it miraculously unlocks.
For some mysterious reason this stopped working, and we had to fetch the fob and press the button. Definitely, it was a first world problem and nothing to get excited about.
Still, it was annoying. There were times it was awkward to fetch the fob and press the right button sight unseen. So I did what any self-respecting nerd would do, I looked it up in the manual. Hmmm, no mention of a “fob” at all, though I knew it was discussed somewhere in the 347-page book.
When that failed I turned naturally to the internet and sure enough there was a discussion about something similar on chevybolt.org. It was a long discussion, as they tend to be, and not exactly my problem. But someone chimed in with a simple solution. I tried it and it didn’t work.
Back to the internet and now armed with better search parameters, I tried again. Bingo.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had issued a service bulletin on this exact problem. Better yet, they provided a remedy. There it was: Information on Passive Door Unlocking Inoperative and/or Enabling and Disabling of Passive Unlocking, Bulletin No.: 18-NA-279, from May, 2021
NHTSA calls the device we use to unlock the door a “fob” because that’s what we all call it. They direct you to hold the “unlock” and the “Lock” buttons for three seconds to enable and disable the automatic feature. That was the trick, holding the buttons for three, count them, three seconds.
And it worked and I was again a happy camper.
Armed now with better key words to search for I went back to the manual and found the same information there.
Naturally, GM doesn’t call a key fob a key fob. They call it, rather officiously, a Remote Keyless Entry or RKE transmitter.
“Keyless Access Operation” is described on page 9 of the owner’s manual.
“The Keyless Access system allows the doors and liftgate to be locked and unlocked without pressing the RKE transmitter button. The RKE transmitter must be within 1m (3 ft) of the liftgate or door being opened. If the vehicle has this feature, there will be a button on both outside front door handles.”
And there it is on page 10; a description of how to disable the keyless unlocking using the RKE and the important remedy.
“With the vehicle off, press and hold Q and K on the RKE transmitter at the same time for approximately three seconds. The turn signal lamps will flash twice quickly to indicate access is enabled.”
There’s also more information the various settings that effect the function of the fob, I mean RKE, on pages 123 and 124.
I hope I can remember this the next time it happens.
