Sony Apologizes for Burning Your Pants, Blames Self

Listen… this whole battery thing makes for great news copy, kind of like sharks off of North Carolina and babies falling down wells – it’s pretty damn rare and it effected a total of 6 people in the past few months. That’s 6 out of millions.

Anyway, Sony is sorry that they burned those people and it cost them about $200 million dollars to recall all those batteries and they think it sucks that:

…under certain rare conditions, an internal short circuit
may lead to cell overheating and potentially flames. The potential for this
to occur can be affected by variations in the system configurations found
in different notebook computers.

The are also improving the current crop of batteries so they won’t explode anymore, so that’s nice to know. Overall, this is a case of mass hysteria that might have gotten a few folks new, improved batteries and may just force these OEMs to rethink their battery strategy and begin using solid state batteries or, even better, fuel cells.

Statement Regarding Sony’s Support of Apple’s Recall of Lithium Ion Battery Packs Used in Apple Notebook Computers [PRNewswire via Engadget]