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Dell Exploding Sparks over Faulty Batteries
Dell To Recall Exploding Batteries
Dell To Recall Exploding Batteries
Tuesday, 15 August 2006
The day after Michael Dell told a Sydney news conference that the reports of
Dell laptop batteries were still being investigated; the company has issued a
recall of laptop batteries that could see more than 4 million potentially
hazardous batteries returned to the company.
Just as well he was also talking up the company's recycling efforts. It seems it
has plenty of work ahead dismantling the 4.1 million batteries likely to be
returned after the recall.
Although no official statement has appeared, (UPDATE: Here it is), The New York
Times (NYT) says the company and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission
(CPSC) have both confirmed the recall.
According to the report the said lithium-ion batteries were manufactured by Sony
for use in Dell laptops between April 2004 and July 18 of this year.
Dell sold the batteries in 2.7 million laptops sold in the U.S and another 1.4
million sold overseas - equal to about 18 per cent of all Dell laptops made
during the period and potentially costing the company as much as US$300 million
to replace, says the NYT.
Dell's current public embarrassment over exploding laptops began in late June
when a Dell laptop very publicly exploded into flames in Japan. The news reached
the blogosphere prompting a rash of other reports including one that featured
some poor guy's hunting truck full of live ammo.
Although Dell (and now Sony) is in the limelight at the moment, lithium-ion
batteries are notoriously dangerous devices which are prone to explosive
demonstrations if damaged or suffer slight manufacturing or design defects.
While Dell says the recall is based on only six instances of fires involving its
laptops, an IT reseller website in the US has accused the company of trying to
cover up the problem saying Dell knew of literally dozens of cases where
laptop's had burst into flames before they issued a recall of laptop batteries
last December.
A former Dell technician, Robert Day, has also been very public about the
numbers of Dell laptops being returned due to spontaneous combustion. He has
claimed that as many as several hundred a year were returned during his time at
Dell and described seeing pallet loads of burnt notebooks causing storage
problems.
Of course Dell has resolutely played down the issue despite the very public
Osaka incident and is not publicly admitting to any more than six problem
computers.
Dell said the problems were a result of a manufacturing defect in batteries made
by Sony. While the CPSC says the manufacturing defect in the Sony batteries was
not unique to those it manufactured for Dell.
This indicates the industry could be facing even more problems with other
vendors (Apple?) likely to be forced into wide ranging recalls of the Sony
batteries in the wake of Dell's announcement.
The obvious danger that a small percentage of lithium ion batteries could self
emulate is prompting calls to curtail their travel entitlements before something
nasty happens midair. The Osaka fire was reportedly caused by a short circuit in
one of the fuel cells caused by microscopic metal particles that contaminated
the electrolyte. It is believed the particles were released when the casing was
crimped at the end of Sony's manufacturing process. This was the same problem
that led to the 22,000 unit recall in December.
The current recall is believed to be the largest safety recall in the history of
the consumer electronics industry. The CPSC lists these product recalls for Dell
dating back to 1994.
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