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. Spokesman Rick Clancy said the companies had conversations in October 2005 and again in February 2006. Discussions were about the problem of small metal particles that had contaminated Lithium-Ion battery cells manufactured by Sony, causing batteries to fail and, in some cases, overheat.
It’s quite impressive how many times Sony hit the news lately with poor attention to the final customer. I guess being a rock solid corporation saves you the trouble of actually caring.
As for the specific issue, polymeric separators are pretty strong (although they are wound up pretty tightly in batteries) as it takes a discrete pressure to puncture them with scissors, but still I don’t really get where these “metal particles” come from. They should probably think about cleaning up around a bit better in their production facilities!
sony lied, batteries died.