A tale of two ostriches August 21, 2006
Posted by fukumimi in IT, electronics, technology.trackback
Alternatively known as the Dell/Sony battery fire fiasco.
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.
From an Infoworld article, dated August 18th.
The two companies knew about and discussed the contamination problem, and the problem was rectified, but they didn’t recall batteries known to be suffering from contamination.
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
I’m sure consumers will be thrilled to buy from manufacturers who when aware of a problem, just cross their fingers and pray that problems won’t occur. That is such an effective and reassuring strategy. Especially when the results of a battery short circuit are not unforseeable.
What we need are batteries which are less susceptible to such catastrophic failures. Electrically rechargeable Zinc/Air battery anyone?
Sony tells of Dell cell hell (and pix o’ the day)
Boom! It’s IT Blogwatch, in which Sony admits it knew about the Dell exploding battery problem ten months ago. Not to mention great pictures from Flickr…