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Li-ion Sony Recall
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While the Sony Li-ion recall in 2006 was widely covered by the press, the reality of the situation was not equally publicized. The reality is that a VERY small number of actual failures, which were later tracked to a manufacturing problem, were widely publicized. The pressures from Sony's major OEM customers (primarily laptop vendors) forced a "voluntary recall/replacement program". In the end, Sony replaced ~9M 18650 cells...at a time where >100M cells were being produced in a single month! This translates to a recall rate of less than 0.7% of that year's production. While certainly not a trivial issue for anyone involved, the publicity paid to this event was very damaging for the Li-ion battery industry.
The original Sony Press Release -
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200609/06-090E/index.html
The failures were eventually tracked to a manufacturing process problem which left metal particles inside the cells which could not be protected by the cells' three levels of internal safety mechanisms. Click here, to read a good Scientific American article on the subject and the cause. The battery equivalent of a spark inside a gas tank! The best prevention method is to never let the spark occur. Sony and other manufacturers have since tightened the manufacturing processes to insure this problem does not happen again.
Back to Boundless' Li-ion Safety
or to Lithium-ion Safety
While the Sony Li-ion recall in 2006 was widely covered by the press, the reality of the situation was not equally publicized. The reality is that a VERY small number of actual failures, which were later tracked to a manufacturing problem, were widely publicized. The pressures from Sony's major OEM customers (primarily laptop vendors) forced a "voluntary recall/replacement program". In the end, Sony replaced ~9M 18650 cells...at a time where >100M cells were being produced in a single month! This translates to a recall rate of less than 0.7% of that year's production. While certainly not a trivial issue for anyone involved, the publicity paid to this event was very damaging for the Li-ion battery industry.
The original Sony Press Release -
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200609/06-090E/index.html
The failures were eventually tracked to a manufacturing process problem which left metal particles inside the cells which could not be protected by the cells' three levels of internal safety mechanisms. Click here, to read a good Scientific American article on the subject and the cause. The battery equivalent of a spark inside a gas tank! The best prevention method is to never let the spark occur. Sony and other manufacturers have since tightened the manufacturing processes to insure this problem does not happen again.
Back to Boundless' Li-ion Safety
