Acer Recalls Sony-Made Laptop Batteries Due to Overheating

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Acer America Corporation, today announced a voluntary program for the replacement of certain notebook computer lithium-ion batteries containing Sony-made cells.

“As announced previously by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, there have been 16 reports of notebook batteries overheating. These reports were associated with earlier recalls by other notebook computer manufacturers of batteries containing these Sony cells. These previous reports involved only minor property damage and two minor burns. None of these reports involved batteries in Acer notebook computers,” Acer published.

The following Acer notebook computer models sold in the United States and Canada may have battery packs affected by this recall:

Acer TravelMate Series Beginning with: 242x, 320x, 321x, 330x, 422x, 467x, 561x, C20x.
Acer Aspire Series Beginning with: 556x, 560x, 567x, 930x, 941x, 980x.

The battery packs included in this program were sold in the United States and Canada through authorized distributors as part of the identified TravelMate and Aspire notebook computers. In addition, these battery packs may have also been provided in response to service calls. The affected battery packs were shipped to distributors beginning in May 2004 and may have been sold at retail through November 2006.

“We encourage you to check to see if your Acer notebook may have one of these battery packs and, if it does, we will replace your battery pack for a new one at no cost to you,” the PC maker says.

The users of notebooks with affected batteries should only power their laptops using AC power until a replacement battery pack is received.

Last fall, when the world’s largest PC vendors recalled Sony laptop batteries used in their notebooks because of reported fire hazards, Acer said it won’t need to make any recall related to that battery overheating problem.