Dell, Sony Discussed Battery Problem 10 Months Ago

InfoWorldMike writes "Dell and Sony knew about and discussed manufacturing problems with Sony-made Lithium-Ion batteries as long as ten months ago, but held off on issuing a recall until those flaws were clearly linked to catastrophic failures causing those batteries to catch fire, a Sony Electronics spokesman said Friday. Spokesman Rick Clancy said the companies had conversations in October 2005 and again in February 2006. As a result of those conversations, Sony made changes to its manufacturing process to minimize the presence and size of the particles in its batteries. However, the company did not recall batteries that it thought might contain the particles because it wasn't clear that they were dangerous, Clancy said. Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden declined to comment on the conversations with Sony in October and February, but told InfoWorld that Dell was 'confident that the manufacturing process at Sony has been changed to address this issue. Now our focus is erring on the side of caution to ensure no more incidents occur.'"

Of course they knew it was dangerous

[pimpimpim]

Otherwise, why would they ever start to examine these things close enough to find out there were small particles in it.

Furthermore, I don't think they were talking about just malfunctioning of the batch of batteries, because I guess general malfunctioning was not an issue with these batteries. Otherwise the batteries that exploded would have already been returned to Dell before they could even get the chance to explode. Or where these all brand new batteries that exploded? And how many stories are there about malfunctioning batteries on Dells, except for the exploding ones?

Re:Lies, damn lies, and PR

[sharkey]

IIRC, Dell had a battery recall in December 2005 for a different issue.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and PR

[Anonymous Coward]

You recall correctly. In december 2005, Dell recalled about 20000 batteries in the US [cpsc.gov], and about 35000 worldwide [heise.de]. I can still remember checking my own laptop's battery on dellbatteryprogram.com, and beeing dissapointed that I didn't get a fresh one for free. This time however, my old and worn battery will be replaced.

Re:What were they thinking?

[blixco]

Failure analysis is a pretty well established science, and when every failure leads to a lawsuit, the analysis is done with a very specific intent.

In this case, Dell will be able to point at Sony as the cause of the problem, unless Sony can produce a demand by Dell for cheap batteries that used inferior design.

Now so far as the science behind exploding batteries, it is hinted at that the battery cells were filled with an inferior product. The particles that carried the charge were too large, which allowed them to carry more energy (heat, in this case) in a concentrated space. Maybe. My bad but best guess.

Re:Story?

[Minwee]

"The story here is that they knew that their batteries were defective"

Define "defective".

Never mind, I'll read the article and do it for you.

"Discussions were about the problem of small metal particles that had contaminated Lithium-Ion battery cells manufactured by Sony, causing batteries to fail and, in some cases, overheat."

They were aware that some batteries could fail. "Fail" and "In some cases, overheat", do not mean "OHMYGODALLTHEBATTERIESAREGOINGTOKILLPEOPLE!" It means "There is a problem with the batteries and we should look at them."

Unless of course you think that that clearly means they were dangerous.

"[...] the company did not recall batteries that it thought might contain the particles because it wasn't clear that they were dangerous. [...] "We didn't have confirmation of incidents [involving fires] until relatively recently.""

The story here is that they knew the batteries were defective, investigated what was happening, and did something about it when they found out what was happening. Look closely at your, sorry, Chuck Palahniuk's equation. When you have no reason to believe that B or C are any greater than zero, then X equals zero. It doesn't take a genius to figure that part out.

Re:Hah!!

[multipartmixed]

I agree wholeheartedly.

Ask any TV repair professional; back about 1990 when the Sony TVs started saying "Made in Mexico", the quality dropped like a stone.

Re:Story?

[gggggggg]

Sure.

They created the dellbatteryprogram.com domain on Nov 2005 [whois.net], obviously with a reclaim in mind already.

Re:Simple Mathematics

[morgan_greywolf]

s/joules per energy/joules per second

VBScript to find Dell Battery Part #

[PoitNarf]

I'm sure there are plenty that were in my situation. Large organization, many Dell Latitude laptops, and many users that probably won't check the part # on their batteries to see if it's included in the recall. I included the following lines to an inventory script we run on all the computers on our Windows domain to collect hardware information which is stored in a SQL database. It is able to get the battery manufacturer and part # from the BIOS. Here's the code for all who are interested:

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_PortableBattery")

For Each objItem in colItems
Wscript.Echo "Manufacturer: " & objItem.Manufacturer
Wscript.Echo "Name: " & objItem.Name
Next

Re:Hah!!

[Abreu]

Sony TVs "made in Mexico" were only assembled in Mexico, from low quality chinese components... The blame lies in China, not across the Rio Grande.

Re:Why Sony Products Should Be Held in High Esteem

[RotHorseKid]

The Ad comes from the 1990 movie Crazy People [imdb.com], starring Daryl Hannah.