HP Recalls 70,000 Laptop Batteries

angry tapir writes "Hewlett-Packard has recalled Lithium-Ion batteries used in some of its laptops, as they pose a fire hazard. The recall covers about 70,000 batteries used in the company's HP and Compaq-branded laptops. The affected laptops can be found here."

Re:No batteries =

[Locke2005]

I am beginning to suspect that there is a flaw in the design of today's lithium batteries.

Modern lithium batteries are designed to achieve the the highest energy density possible. I suspect they do this by cutting as close as possible to the limits. The higher the energy density, the greater the chance of a short circuit and the greater the chance of a meltdown if something shorts out. Sure, they could design safer batteries, but those would weigh more and last less time on a charge -- not exactly the attributes the market is demanding. There may be exceptions, but in general if you want to store more energy in a smaller space with less weight, it is inevitably going to be more volatile.

I wonder how long it will be before the TSA makes these batteries illegal on planes.

Re:No batteries =

[omnichad]

Lithium batteries are dangerous. Period. The fact that they are being made in China should scare you. If anything goes wrong, lithium batteries want to overheat or explode.

Re:Dump the battery

[Anonymous Coward]

That should fix it once and for all.

Do you mean Li-Ion batteries in general?

They offer the best power to weight ratio and if you include length of time before charges, they're the best thing to come to the market.

4th Recall in 5 years

[Het Irv]

This is the 4th recall of batteries by HP in 5 years... You would think, okay maybe the first is a fluke, everyone screws up sometimes. The second time, you get a bit worried, but four times? I think someone in HP needs to work out how much each of these recalls is costing them per year, maybe those figures will convince them that manufacturing them to a higher standard wouldn't be a bad idea.

Overheating...

[sou11ess]

My HP dv9000 is horrible when it comes to overheating. I specifically bought a laptop cooler to keep it cool and operational. Google "hp dv9000 overheating" for a number of people with similar issues.

I wonder how much of the overheating is from the battery simply be improperly designed, or if the laptop's own design heats up the battery more than normal.

Re:4th Recall in 5 years

[inviolet]

This is the 4th recall of batteries by HP in 5 years... You would think, okay maybe the first is a fluke, everyone screws up sometimes. The second time, you get a bit worried, but four times? I think someone in HP needs to work out how much each of these recalls is costing them per year, maybe those figures will convince them that manufacturing them to a higher standard wouldn't be a bad idea.

Why in the world would you assume that they haven't already performed exactly that calculation?

On a less cynical note, high-density lithium-polymer batteries is a very tricky business... doing it en masse doubly so.

Re:No batteries =

[Sandbags]

Actually, the issue is NOT the individual cells, it's a problem called cascade failure and is usually do to the failure of a terminal seperator inside the battery causeing a short. The individual cells are actually quite stable, but like a 9volt touching a coin in your pocket, the can get very hot very quickly. At about 600 degrees, they combust internally and expel steam, which can chain react heating nearby cells to combustible temps as well.

The space inside the battery pack that hits 600 degrees can be extremely small, not mutch larger than the head of a pin, which might make the battery case feel only "uncomfortably warm" just before explosion starts (which is an extended process of a slow burn explosion, but a "boom".)

Li-Ions are often seen "shooting fire" while combusting.

More often than not, this actually isn't manufacturing defect per-se, but batteries being exposed to flexing, alternating hot/cold environments, being dropped repeatedly, and other things that may not actually damage the outside of the pack, but cause internal compression damage eventually leading to a short or failure.