Hitachi Recalls Its Sony-Made Laptop Batteries

Fears of overheating laptop batteries continued Friday as Hitachi Corp. said it will recall 16,000 laptop battery packs made by Sony Corp.

The battery packs cited in the recall are installed in Hitachi's Flora 210W and Flora Se210 laptops. Hitachi will pay for the recall, according to press reports. No problems have been reported with the Hitachi devices.

Laptops made by most major manufacturers are participating in a global recall of Sony's lithium-ion batteries. Dell Computer alone accounted for some 4 million laptops in the recall campaign.

Sony has said that in rare circumstances due to production methods, the batteries can short-circuit. One major laptop maker avoiding the recall to date is HP, which has said its battery design approach has safeguarded its laptops. HP uses the Sony batteries.