Panasonic has expanded the recall of its lithium-ion batteries sold in Australia.
The come comes after a series of overheating incidents left some users with “light burns.”
The electronics manufacturer added an extra 98,520 CF-VZSU53AW battery packs used in the H2 Toughbook tablet outside Japan, this is up from the 8,530 initially announced earlier in the year.
The firm also recalled 164,736 batteries used with its Let’s Note notebook series which was not sold in Australia.
In total, Panasonic has recalled 314,926 battery packs worldwide this year.
The company also revealed that four additional incidents had occurred in relation to overheating batteries in Japan since the first recall announcement back in May. These included some “light burns” to the fingers of two individuals from Tokyo and Saitama after the batteries caught fire.
A company spokesperson also confirmed that there have been no overheating incidents involving H2 Toughbook batteries sold overseas.
Panasonic also informed users via an official recall page that H2 batteries can be used in H1 and U1 tablets, so owners of those devices are advised to check if the defective batteries have been swapped in. The batteries will be replaced free-of-charge by the firm, which revealed that the problem is the result of an error in the manufacturing process.
The Japanese company is not the only firm to experience overheating issues with its battery packs recently after Lenovo initiated a recall of its ThinkPad batteries back in March.
