HP Recalls Another 100,000 Laptop Batteries After Reports of Overheating and Damage (techrepublic.com)

HP is continuing its recall of laptop batteries that could pose a risk to consumers. The company has recalled more than 100,000 lithium-ion batteries used in its notebook computers, according to Consumer Product Safety Commission. The recall expands one from HP in June, when an additional 41,000 batteries were recalled in the US. From a report on TechRepublic: The affected laptops were said to include a lithium-ion battery containing Panasonic cells that malfunctioned, leading to "overheating, melting and charring and causing about $1,000 in property damage," the US Consumer Product Safety (US CPSC) report said. The batteries in question could have been used in HP, Compaq, HP ProBook, HP ENVY, Compaq Presario, and HP Pavilion notebook computers. The recalled batteries were in laptops sold between March 2013 and October 2016, the CPSC report stated. Affected laptops could have been purchased at Best Buy, Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, or another authorized dealer nationwide or online. The average cost of the laptops was between $300-$1700, and the standalone batteries were sold from $50-$90.

Comments

Batteries turn out to be dangerous

[dargaud]

The more energy they pack, the more damage they are likely to cause when something goes south. Shouldn't there be some kind of national certification / testing program before they are allowed to be put on the market ? Discuss...

Re:Batteries turn out to be dangerous

[Solandri]

Wouldn't help because the batteries aren't the problem per se. It's the charging circuitry and charge history. Lithium-ion batteries become unstable if overcharged, or over-discharged and then recharged. Any Li-ion battery which is tested and certified as safe can still catch fire or explode if it's been charged/discharged in an unsafe manner.

Way back when Li-ion smart phones and laptop batteries first appeared, manufacturers attempted to address this problem by putting the charging circuitry in the battery pack. The phone or laptop merely presented the battery pack with a certain amount of voltage and current. The battery's charging circuitry decided how to use that to charge the battery. And if it decided the battery was in an unsafe state or behaving strangely, it killed it. Unfortunately, the market got flooded with cheap knockoff "compatible" battery packs which either had poor charge protection circuitry, or didn't even have any protection. This is what led to the spate of battery fires in early cell phones and Li-ion laptops.

A certification / testing program might have helped back then. But it didn't happen, so manufacturers were forced to move the charge control circuitry into the phone or laptop as a result. That way you could put in a cheap aftermarket battery, and still be reasonably protected (lithium-ion cells are fairly generic in terms of how their voltage responds to charge). Consequently, testing and certifying the battery packs won't do much good.

HP = junk

[Desler]

Dude! You're getting an...... HP?!!!

CSPC and HP Links

[bosef1]

Here are links to the CPSC and HP websites for the recall

CPSC
https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2017/HP-Expands-Recall-of-Batteries-for-HP-and-Compaq-Notebook-Computers

HP
http://www.hp.com/go/batteryprogram2016

Re:Which Laptop Models?

[suutar]

perhaps more to the point, from the article: " The batteries included in this expanded recall have bar codes starting with: 6BZLU, 6CGFK, 6CGFQ, 6CZMB, 6DEMA, 6DEMH, 6DGAL and 6EBVA."