Dell To Recall Exploding Batteries

Written by Adam Gosling

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. Dell Recall of Notebook Computer Batteries (December 16, 2005 ) Dell Inc. Recall of AC Adapters for Notebook Computers (October 08, 2004) Lexmark International Inc. Recall of Laser Printers (September 7, 2004 ) Dell Inc. Recall of Power Adapters for Notebook Computers (July 1, 2004) Notebook Computer Batteries Recalled by Dell Computer Corp. (May 3, 2001) Batteries for Notebook-Computers Recalled by Dell (October 13, 2000) AC Adapters for Latitude LM Computers and LM Port Replicators Recall (October 21, 1997) Dell DL-1460NI 14 inch SVGA Computer Monitors Recalled (May 20, 1994) Related news items Tiny Rugged UMPC WIth Vista -10/10/2007 HP Goes iPaq Mad -06/09/2007 Leather-Bound ThinkPad Has Its Own Nerd -06/09/2007 Semi-Rugged With Grunt -05/09/2007 Fujitsu LifeBook - 12.1 inch; 11 hours; 1.53kg -21/08/2007 Newer news items Unprotected Phones Abandoned At Airports -03/09/2006 Discarded Handhelds Reveal Secrets -30/08/2006 Apple Follows Dell To Replace Sony Batteries -24/08/2006 Naughty Dell Notebooks Powerless On Qantas -23/08/2006 Cell Phone Forces Pilot To Abort Flight -14/08/2006 Older news items 3 Teams With AppSense For More Affordable Security -09/08/2006 Oh, Okay. Another Dell Explosion Story -04/08/2006 Patch Your Centrino Device Drivers -02/08/2006 Laptop Battery Drama Lives On - In Mid-Air -13/07/2006 VeriSign To Secure WiMAX Networks -12/07/2006 Tag This Now: