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Dell Plans Huge Recall of Troubled Batteries

Company Bows to Safety Concerns in Wake of Fires

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com

August 14, 2006

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As stories about Dell laptop fires spread, Dell has decided to recall 4.1 million laptop batteries, a Dell insider told ConsumerAffairs.com.

The insider, ex-Dell engineer Robert Day, said the problem appears to be caused by batteries Sony manufactured for Dell between 2003 and 2006.

A source at the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, who did not want to be identified, confirmed the recall but said full details would not be made available until early tomorrow morning.

A Dell spokesman confirmed the company had "negotiated conditions of the recall" with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. It will be the largest electronics-related recall ever conducted by the agency.

The spokesman said the batteries were made by Sony Corp. and placed in in some models of Dell's Latitude, Inspiron, XTS and precision mobile workstation notebooks that were shipped between April 1, 2004, and July 18 of this year.

On August 3, ConsumerAffairs.com reported the story of Thomas Forqueran, stranded at Lake Mead State Park in Nevada after a Dell laptop set his vintage truck ablaze.

That story came in the wake of two other summer Dell laptop blazes -- one in which cameras caught an exploding Dell laptop at a conference in Japan. The other took place in Illinois where a Dell laptop spurted flames for over five minutes and forced an evacuation of an office building.

Airline regulators have also become alarmed and may ban laptops in planes.

Ronald Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance USA, said the battery is the prime suspect in the laptop fires.

Riley gave two possible reasons for the battery combustion. He said the battery could have an internal short, as part of a manufacturer's defect, causing the battery to explode. He said any number of variables could trigger the flames.

He also said it's possible that when the battery gets hot, it "wants" to expand, but has no room.

"As the temperature rises, the conductors and plates buckle because they have no room to expand," Riley said. "If Dell used a thermometer that would automatically shut down the computer when the battery gets too hot, this could be avoided. ... The point is, the computer should not be able to get hot enough to do that."

Dell did not return two phone calls.

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