Sanyo, Lenovo Share Cost of Defective Battery Recall

Japanese electronics company Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. and computer vendor Lenovo Group Ltd. are discussing how to pay for the recall of over 200,000 laptop PC batteries, but have agreed to share the burden.

"We are discussing the recall with Lenovo right now," said Akihiko Oiwa, a spokesman for Sanyo. Raymond Gorman, a spokesman for Lenovo, confirmed that the companies will share the cost but declined to disclose details of the plan.

The companies have determined that the battery packs suffer from a faulty design, but they are not immediately dangerous unless they have been dropped or otherwise damaged, he said. The companies are recalling the batteries to ensure the safety of users, who could end up with overheating or smoking laptop batteries.

The recall is unrelated to the manufacturing problem that left metal shards inside battery cells made by Sony Corp and caused some to overheat and catch fire. Sony's troubles could lead to the recall of as many as 9.6 million batteries and cost the company an estimated ¥51.2 billion (US$433.5 million).

Oiwa declined to comment on how much the latest recall might cost Sanyo or Lenovo.

The recall affects batter packs sold by Lenovo as an option on certain versions of ThinkPad notebook PCs in the R series, T series and Z series model lines. The faulty packs have the part number FRU P/N 92P1131.

(Robert Mullins in San Francisco contributed to this report.)