IBM and Lenovo announced a recall of 500,000 Sony lithium-ion batteries used in Thinkpad notebook computers, following a widely publicized Thinkpad explosion at Los Angeles International Airport last week. Here’s an article with more details about the Thinkpad battery recall.
Dell began in August with a recall of 4.1 million batteries, followed by Apple’s recall of 1.8 million more. Earlier this month Toshiba announced a recall of 340,000 batteries. All of the recalls involve defective batteries manufactured by Sony.
There’s an ironic quote in the above article: “Back in 2004, Sony execs said lithium ion technology would likely be hitting its limit in 2006.” They were right, I guess – the technology isn’t just hitting its limit, it’s literally exploding in our faces.
UPDATE (September 29): Toshiba has increased its recall to nearly a million batteries, and Dell has added a million more to its recall. Here’s today’s news.
