GM Ready to Fix Your Volt

Worried about battery fires in your Chevy Volt? Soon, you'll be able to bring the car to a dealer for a fix, GM says. The company will ask the owners of 8,000 of the cars to bring them to dealerships, the AP reports; technicians will then beef up the protective structure around the battery. That should prevent the casing from being punctured in crashes, which led to fires in tests last year.

Those fires prompted a government investigation, which has not concluded. The agency in charge, however, says the GM fix looks promising, the Detroit Free Press reports. Dealership work should will begin in February, GM says, noting that it's not a full-fledged recall because the government didn't mandate the move. Despite news of the fires, December was the Volt's biggest sales month yet, with 1,529 cars purchased. (More General Motors stories.)