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FWIW this has caused a big storm in China. The root of the issue is known to be caused by the battery cell vendor Amprius changing the battery design w/o notifying the power bank manufacturers. AFAIKT Amprius lost the 3C certification (a certification in China) because of this incident.

This is one of the Chinese reports on the issue: https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_31048287

Excerpt from the report above (translated using Google):

> The Paper learned from an insider that Anker Innovations' battery cell supplier is already a leading battery cell supplier in the industry, and did not inform customers after it changed materials. In addition to Anker Innovations, the supplier also cooperates with leading power bank brands, so the impact is huge. Although Anker Innovations did not name the supplier, an insider pointed out that the supplier was Amprius.

UPDATE:

There's an exclusive interview by 36kr with one of Anker's VPs:

https://m.36kr.com/p/3365435892680709

I work in manufacturing in the US. Incoming quality control, for Chinese vendors, is necessarily set up with zero-trust. This isn't a "trust but verify" sort of thing, it's strictly "do not trust". Assume that, at every step of the chain, there will be a lie: change of process, material change, collected data, and that the product being given to you is even yours (delivering a knockoff at the final step, and reselling yours on the gray market).

This is all common knowledge, proven by example after example that it's necessary to have zero trust. It's truly an adversarial system. All the extra engineering effort for IQC is still cheaper. And, there's rarely an alternative to the amazing manufacturing ecosystem that is China.

After tracking down several of these types of issues, it appears that the Chabuduo mindset [1] is a very real thing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32465780

Yep. Anything I get from China, even from a vendor I have done lots of business with in the past gets at minimum random samples inspected and tested when appropriate. Every single shipment, zero exceptions before use.

So many things are caught. At best there is a lack of QA on the Chinese side, but it's definitely worse than that. They have no qualms sending you known-bad items, and just see it as "maybe the customer won't notice" and worth a try. It's definitely a giant pain in the ass, and adds a ton of expense and friction to the process. Lots of stuff you simply cannot source from any other country though - even if you do, the supply chain usually traces back to China anyways so all you're doing is adding a middleman layer to the problem.

It's extremely important to set very explicit and strict quality parameters and specifications prior to any deal you do with a vendor. Even then you will miss things that will later be argued about. The more you can specify the better, otherwise it will be seen as negotiable/changeable.

A lot of folks used to living in a high trust society get really taking advantage by this. Any vendor sourcing from China and not implementing an extreme level of QA to the process is being negligent, and I assume that's quite a lot if not the vast majority.

I have family in the auto industry, and they have similar stories. They'll get a shipment and it'll be out of spec. So they contact the vendor and the vendor will just say, "No, they're fine. Parts are good." No, they're out of spec and you need to fix them. Look, I can show you. "No, parts are good." And you'll go around and around like that. They won't care and won't budge.

Until you say, "Well, since these are out of spec, we're not paying for them. That's in the contract." And now it's suddenly a problem for them!

But the Korean and Japanese can be even weirder, because they will often only listen to someone if they have at least as much seniority as them. Like it won't matter how right you are, just your position.

Was this last paragraph necessary?

We're talking about culture differences about perception of accountability. Not necessary but definitely on topic.

Cultural differences is an easy sub for racism? Not suggesting bad faith but when it's hard to also take commentary on Asia with good faith here.

I don't know, assuming all cultures should be functionally equivalent seems pretty imperialist to me.

I'm Polish and when I mentioned it I always get commentary about how smart or hard working Polish people are, and usually mention of some mathematician or programmer they knew at some point. And it makes me laugh because if you notice that Polish people are smart or hard working, why don't you give me a quick rundown of who you think is lazy and dumb? Ohhh, that's racist.

So I was talking with the family I mentioned about this issue last night, and he said they got training on it and called it power distance index. Japan and Korea are high index cultures. He mentioned that it's caused airline disasters. It still surprises him sometimes when he encounters it because it's so different from American and automotive engineering culture both.

So I looked, and yeah it's pretty well described:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_distance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_culture_on_aviation_...

So, my question to you is, given that the above is pretty widely recognized, why is it racist to merely describe an experience with this cultural difference?

That was basically my point. For some reason commenting on positive traits is totally acceptable. But God forbid someone comments on a negative statistical trait, you're a racist.

Acknowledging cultural differences is different from assuming that cultural differences are determined by genetics and not life experiences.

Saying that someone grew up in a culture that values a certain type of academic education and achievement is different than saying they have those characteristics because of their racial genetic heritage.

It's also one thing to be aware of cultural trends and differences when designing multicultural systems to function well. It's another to project cultural trends onto individual people since the variation between people in a culture easily dominates the variation in the averages between cultures.

Of course, nuance like this rarely makes it into common discourse, which often does end up just being racist.

Truth is always necessary, I can confirm it about the Japanese - it can get really weird, a lot weirder than anything I've experienced with Chinese nationals.

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I don't get how it's possible that nobody (other than Tesla) can manufacture batteries in the West?

It a glance this feels insane. Batteries are in everything and such a basic need.

How is it possible that buying through known scammers with tons of QA is still cheaper than manufacturing in the West?

Obviously for Tesla it isn't cheaper to buy from China, so why is it thought to be cheaper for the rest of the West? Is it purely scale?

Scale is definitely a huge part of it. China controls huge amounts of the earth’s (processed) lithium & rare earth metal supply: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/china-is-oversup...

On top of that, the US does not have very many lithium or rare earth metal mines or processing facilities relative to our demand.

But it’s hard to deny scale: the US is a populous country. But there are more than ONE BILLION more people in China. It’s foolish for us to expect to stay on the same playing field forever. The economies of scale and innovation you can accomplish with that many people is… a lot.

This was a fascinating article about specifically the robotics side of technology, touching on some of these points: https://semianalysis.com/2025/03/11/america-is-missing-the-n...

Part of the idea is that there are cities in China that have really strong positive feedback loops when it comes to developing new, cheap robotics tech. Whereas in the US, it might take weeks to order parts from suppliers in, you guessed it, China. It’s hard to compete with companies that have direct access to the supply chain and skilled workers right across the street, in an industry where lots of iteration and evolution is necessary.

> But it’s hard to deny scale: the US is a populous country. But there are more than ONE BILLION more people in China.

This is true for the US alone, but US+Canada+EU is on the same order of magnitude, all of which prefer a more-than-zero-trust situation.

Which is also very spread out, with an ocean bisecting. Not exactly "skilled workers right across the street" for most of that land.

China is huge in area too. You don't have one billion people right across the street. Anything that is across the street is, by definition, a localized thing involving far fewer people, which you can totally have in US+CA+EU too.

not just an ocean, the various governments and visas make it hard to move people you need

Not just people, parts too. Importing parts from the USA to the UK often takes longer and has more paperwork than from China.

Also don't forget tolls / tariffs. Building products that relies on parts from different countries (at least from/to USA) reduces the margins compared to a unified Chinese market.

Visas are a political human construct subject to change, not a immovable force of nature. The same visa keeping workers out, can always be removed or changed over night if desired to achieve the opposite effect: move masses of skilled people in. See operation paperclip.

If you look at historic locations of hyperinnovation there are bunch of different things. One of which is density of the activity and the supply chain. Imagine needing a new gearset for a robot, you roll down to Gear Set Alley looking for a used unit, you hit 4 different robot wrecking yards, explaining to 5 people along the way. They eventually point you over to machine shop that has modified an existing part into exactly what you are looking for.

You can solve in a day what might take you a day, what might take you 20 days, 3x the price and a lead time of weeks. These kinds of hyperfocused, super dense innovation zones have existed in many places across all of time.

A bit late, but I'll try...

This assumes that Gear Set Alley is near you. At >3km you'd go by car and the "meet people on the way" breaks down. At >100km you'd rather call them and miss the wrecking yards and other factories nearby.

In China, Gear Set Alley may easily be 1000km from you. Or it may be <3km from you, if you're lucky. The point is that China, taken as a whole, has no advantage over EU or US in geographical proximity. Certain regions may have that advantage, but that is totally possible in every country on earth (beyond a certain, very tiny minimum size).

Batteries where "uninteresting" so their production was outsourced to Asia. Chinese invested in battery science, engineering and manufacturing. Fast forward a few decades, and here we are.

Now with EVs and energy storage batteries are super interesting, and battery factories are being built in west too - by Asian companies (CATL, LG, Panasonic).

Even Tesla doesn't make their own cells, Panasonic does. Tesla's promised own cells are only in very few Teslas.

How does that work out in practice? Panasonic owns the machines, do they employee and manage their own set of workers in the Tesla factory in Reno? and then Tesla pays Panasonic who pays them, even though they're working right alongside the Tesla employees? How distinct is it, really, when they're in the same factory working side by side?

I would imagine this is most likely a shop in shop scenario, which is rather common in the automotive industry.

Basically, a specialized vendor for a given component is setting up their own production/assembly in your facilities - in some instances even along your assembly line.

The workers operating these machines are usually trained and employed by the supplier.

This setup does have some benefits, like less potential for supply chain disruptions as well as guaranteed capacity. But it is extremely personell intensive and generally requires enormous upfront investments.

Tesla is struggling to manufacture its own cells: https://www.energytrend.com/news/20240628-47693.html

As for designing them, this was a good interview with the CEO of CATL pointing to talent pipeline issues. We don't train enough chemical engineers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VIXjjw4u9A

That was interesting - CATL has 21000 engineers and several hundred PhDs developing batteries and been doing it for 25 years. You can see why it's hard for some western startup like Northvolt to compete with that.

But Tesla don't make battery cells - Panasonic, LG and CATL make those (although co-located in Telsa's factories).

That isn't true for Tesla's 4680 that was briefly in the AWD Model Y and is currently in the Cybertruck. They are well behind the leaders in range and charging, but the company claims that they are competitive with cells from their suppliers on cost. Charging performance is on par with cars like the F-150 Lightning, which also isn't very good.

They are also starting to build their own lfp batteries at a new factory in Nevada, though it sounds like those will be for stationary storage.

How did they fall behind? Didn't they have tabless and 4680 first? Did they lose Talent post 'Nazi' Musk?

a lot of it is probably lack of scale. Tesla is making not that many batteries on the scale of CATL. naziness probably didn't help, nor the fact that Tesla/Musk is fairly famous for working employees way too hard until they burn out.

>a lot of it is probably lack of scale.

Thats what im thinking as well. I was concerned when Straubel announced his departure but after reading multiple sources, it seems like the real reason he left was because he was getting bored and wanted to start something new (battery recycling). My hope is that he put a team there to continue onwards. It didn't seem like anyone was panicking when he announced, sounded like it was in the works for a while.

Cybertruck was supposed to have something like 250k yearly right? Are they even getting 30k yearly?

But still...tabless, structural pack, 4680, dry cell these are all things they had in production first right?

BYD Blade is amazing, but its more of a optimizing a mass market LFP cell no? Whereas I am referring to putting cutting edge tech into production.

Yeah, all the employees left and all of Musk's companies are now bankrupt after he visited Israel to visit families of victims of the Hamas terror attacks and he then deliberately did a nazi salute and deliberately ordered an LLM to convert everybody into nazis in an attempt to take over the world.

/s

I don't want to, but I can't stop thinking that DJT might be kind of right on this one. Each of economical blocks in this world such as EU/US, China, or Japan, don't mutually co-depend enough for any foreign currencies like USD or CNY to be single universal representation of values.

The current US administration's weird argument is that the USD values exchanged in inter-national trades must be symmetrical, but if you think about it, the amounts just don't mean anything. Balancing the amount only, like forcing the other party buy tons of American stuffs, won't solve it. The exchanged amounts only fuel philosophical border towns and dependency chains don't penetrate deep into foreign economies. The prices are not manipulated, it's just random.

The US has enough of everything to make batteries, you just can't fight something sold at completely arbitrary prices on economical grounds.

The numbers aren't even relevant as he's obsessing about flows tracked across borders. An awful lot of what the US exports is services and data, not things, and doesn't show up.

Look at that research base that got targeted. Imports: what the scientists need. Exports: science. The latter doesn't show up, it looked like it was hugely "out of balance" despite the only inhabitants being penguins.

In the real world, something's being exported even if you're not tracking it. If there was a large, continuing imbalance the relative values of the currencies would change.

https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/08/04/blog-global...

The US is running a persistent current account deficit (and the largest one at that) for 20 years, which is the more relevant metric that includes services & data. This is an undisputed fact by most economists and institutions.

The relative values of currencies aren't changing because the central banks of surplus countries are actively managing capital inflows by buying foreign assets to keep their currency values stable. The Fed is one of the few that don't because they don't have that mandate.

>The current US administration's weird argument is that the USD values exchanged in inter-national trades must be symmetrical,

In Econ 101 going back to Keynes, if you run a persistent current account surplus, the increased demand for your currency to pay for your exports will strengthen your currency, thus reducing the competiveness of your exports, thus reducing your trade surplus. Vice versa for a deficit. Hence persistent trade imabalances should not exist due to self-balancing FX-effects.

This isn't happening in reality for a variety of reasons, but it's common knowledge that it's government policies that directly try to prevent that from occuring. Capital Controls, Protectionist Policies, etc, the most explicit mechanism is the controversial currency manipulation, whereby many central banks manage capital inflows by buying US assets to keep their currency stable.

But the aggregate result of this is that we have a strange situation today whereby the US dollar is simultaneously strong yet running a massive deficit, while surplus countries have weak currencies. And these imbalances are growing rather than shrinking. Many mainstream economists don't think the situtation is sustainable, but their proposals to fix it are differing.

I'd agree that Trump's method of "forcing" other countries to buy more American stuff is just a short-term fix that won't solve the underlying issues, but the real solutions of tariffs, currency revaluations or introducing capital controls will be hard to stomach for everyone, albeit necessary. Although the "correct" solutions like the Bancor will all be much more harmful to surplus countries than the USA.

But countries don't pay for imports with the currency of the producing nation and get their own currency for their exports. They use the USD for that. Econ 101 doesn't apply when you are an international reserve currency because demand is not exclusively tied to exports.

Increasing FX reserves also increases the national currency's strength because the Central Banks has more reserves to prop up it's value. The opposite is what we call a currency crisis when you run out such reserves and the value of your currency falls.

Tesla buys most of their batteries from Japanese and Chinese companies like Panasonic and CATL. Some of those are assembled in factories like the Nevada gigafactory where Panasonic runs part of the factory. They’ve struggled with quality and capacity issues, which I think really just hits the idea that China spent decades on infrastructure and it’ll take similar amounts of time to catch up.

Meanwhile the Chinese Economy has (a dif't set of) infrastructure deficiencies of at least the same magnitude as the US so this world dominationation trip Xi is on is no less egotistically delusional than MAGA such that China needs the US as much as the US needs China. Leaders will always play the violin while the town's aflame.

/Games Without Frontiers

Toyota built a battery plant in North Carolina.

https://careers.toyota.com/us/en/tbmnc

Presumably some combination of higher labor and environmental costs.

It is remarkable that Tesla was able to figure it out.

It certainly started that way.

It's still that way, but a bit less so. The intractable problem now is entire supply chains end to end do not exist in the west. If you wanted to start a battery company you are going to have a really hard time sourcing all your components in-country. All the way down to the inks used in printing the serial number on stuff.

In the end of course it all ends up as a cost, but even if you somehow dropped all environmental standards and set the cost of labor to match China today it would take decades just to get the institutional knowledge and infrastructure back.

The West is an order of magnitude (or more) more expensive, that’s why.

That doesn't sound right. Tesla sells battery packs for around 3x the price of Chinese batteries.

Maybe Tesla’s batteries have some sort of competitive advantage that Elon et al. don’t want to risk leaking to the rest of the world?

(no idea if that’s the case, I have no specialized knowledge about batteries, just venturing a guess)

No, the cells themselves are fairly standard and built by third parties (Panasonic, LG, CATL), just co-located in Tesla's factories.

The battery packs themselves have been pulled apart and studied by everyone, pretty much all EV manufacturers are doing similar things anyway, so no real special sauce anywhere anymore.

Now there are more mature EV players in the game, innovations are happening from many manufacturers now (not just Tesla leading anymore) and then everyone else converges on the best ideas.

Thanks for the explanation! It’s always nice to learn something new :)

>A lot of folks used to living in a high trust society get really taking advantage by this.

Everything you describe happens even with US suppliers. Dealing with one right now that sent us sheet metal that was painted + silkscreened incorrectly (a very large symbol was completely dropped by them). They proceeded to "refinish" them, wrong by silkscreening a second time which completely degraded the quality of smaller text on the metal panel. They sent it to us with not a care in the world.

They got sent back and told to rework the panels completely (strip them). And what did they do? Not strip the paint fully and now components that slot into the panels do not fit because there's basically an extra 1/8" of paint on the inside edges.

The worse part due to our own internal politics, we couldn't just let use our significantly more reliable Chinese supplier who has easily eaten a million dollars in errors before.

This US supplier is charging us for every single bit of their incompetence.

> This US supplier is charging us for every single bit of their incompetence.

I don't think that's entirely fair, since there's definitely some naivety here. "What happens if there's a mistake" needs to be the first thing you ask, when working with anyone. If you don't, you've both agreed to an uncomfortable argument, when things go wrong. Get it out of the way at the beginning, but expect to pay a little more for not relying on hopes and dreams of perfection.

And, there's a good chance that if you read the fine print, you explicitly agreed to this.

Presumably this is an "honest" mistake via incompetence by the vendor, with horrible follow-up to remedy said mistake. The same of course happens with every vendor located anywhere in the world. It's getting much worse lately in the US as far as I can tell.

The difference though is your vendor using a lower grade metal than specified, knowingly and with intent to defraud since they decided that you might not notice and/or care enough for it to matter. That sort of thing doesn't seem to happen as much in the West.

I do agree that the reliable Chinese vendors will make things right at their expense if you can prove that they did not meet what they agreed upon. This is basically how I choose to deal with a vendor or not in China (or anywhere, for that matter) - I know stuff will happen, but how hard did I have to fight for them to make it right?

> That sort of thing doesn't seem to happen as much in the West.

This happens a lot in Italy. There was even a huge scandal about how olive oil isn’t pure olive oil.

Intel used to be infamous for doing this, if you'd like a western example.

A number of the integrators I worked with added rules banning customer-supplied CPUs because Intel would give away "working" product to educational/other institutions that, uh, did not POST, and it was such a headache so often that they banned using the product.

what? that makes no sense, why would Intel do that?

Because the person at Intel giving them away wasn’t performance benchmarked on whether they worked or not?

Anytime you find a weird outcome, assume there’s an internal misaligned incentive in a company. (Or just laziness / incompetence)

I can't speak to why, but I can promise you firsthand that both of those statements were true and not things I simply heard about.

My old workplace received such donations, we had to pay to replace a number of them that were DOA in the resulting systems, and the VAR we were using to build our systems for us informed us they had added a policy forbidding BYO for that reason between our failure rate and others who had used them.

My assumption would be that they were only slightly more carefully managed than things that "fell off a truck" - that is, they were probably given away internally because they were nominally cosmetically unsuitable for sale and not easily salvageable by binning, but you got what you paid for in terms of warranty coverage.

It's always good to check your vendors. I wouldn't limit it to Chinese vendors only. I have experienced similar issues with American or European vendors. Americans are pretty bad a fix spec issues compared to Europeans.

so LLM-like)

>Chabuduo mindset [1] is a very real thing

IMO high tech cost optimization is like the opposite of chabuduo - it's not half-assing, but over value engineer under pressure. The PRC's "amazing" manufacturing system fosters adversarial competition down the supply chain because there are so many competitors, packed with technical talent incentivized to value-engineer the shit out of everything to squeeze out fractions of a RMB more per unit. Some engineering team probably poured thousands of man-hours and retooled $$$ manufacturing lines just to gain a tiny margin edge. Sometimes that backfires. But the pressure isn't about laziness - it's involutionary effort. The result is still a zero-trust environment, since when manufacturing base is so dense, everyone incentivized to cut corners or optimize/tweak silently, they usually do, forcing everyone upstream to stay hyper vigilant. So we end up in default equilibrium where it's cheaper/more optimal to squeeze downstream and inspect.

If you ever watched BigClive, the Chinese often make mistakes that can't be explained by cost optimization.

It certainly can be explained by some variant of fraud though.

Speaking of which, I have a pile of sketchy Chinese AliExpress electrical and electronic gadgets I need to send BigClive. Adds to reminder list.

Value engineering is great and all but that doesn't sound like it is the only factor at play.

> and that the product being given to you is even yours (delivering a knockoff at the final step, and reselling yours on the gray market).

Many factors, including shady, I'm just noting it's not laziness / chabuduo culture driving behavior in these scenarios.

I mean, “keep the nice thing you built and send a dodgy knock off” sure does raise your quarterly gross margin…

^^^ is closer to the truth for the swap out; eek out those margins.

Culturally, chabuduo is more of an excuse/greed of the lazy to convince you it’s close enough [that it won’t make a difference to you] and they’re too lazy or out of patience, for many reasons they also don’t want to explain to you.

It's one thing to optimize for cost, it's another to commit fraud. Just like knocking over old ladies and running off with their handbags is a potential source of revenue, you just shouldn't do it. The bigger underlying problem is that this sort of fraud goes without penalty.

Does this also partly explain why appliances don't last long, there is no margin of durability for anything?

reminds me of this old but crazy if true comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138699

Yep, there is an interesting book "Poorly made in china" talking about the same thing... not powerbanks but same modus operandi.

For example (hope I didn't mess up the details, it's been some time since I read it), a cosmetics manufacturer vendor replaced shampoo bottles with ones made with less (thinner) plastics multiple times, untill they started being destroyed in shipping... without notifying the company that ordered the shampoo... and then wanted more money for the "better" shampoo bottles.

Also some very questionable practices:

-----

The hair gel that we produced at the factory was green. One day, I noticed that the worker who filled the gel bottles had a skin condition. His hands were covered with the slick formula, and beneath the green, shimmery layer, I could see that the skin on his hands was peeling. Small, raw patches of flesh were exposed, and you didn’t have to be a dermatologist to see that his skin was infected.

“We should probably do something about this one,” I said to Sister, trying to sound calm, while in my head alarm bells were ringing.

Sister did not see the point. “Why?” she asked.

“It might be a health issue?”

“But the worker has done nothing wrong. It’s just an allergic reaction.”

Trying to press the matter, I suggested that the worker might contaminate the product.

Sister twisted around the argument. “How can he harm the product when it was the product that caused him the harm?”

To me they're still doing a "trust but verify" system. Zero trust would mean not trusting them with their products at all and moving manufacturering elsewhere. It sounds like Anker skimped on verification and they're paying the price.

> would mean not trusting them with their products at all and moving manufacturering elsewher

That's not an option. There's usually nowhere else to go that makes financial sense. So you work in the cheap zero trust environment, and pay a bit more to verify everything.

Anker skimped on verification because there was non-zero trust, and they're paying the price.

You probably also do not pay those Chinese vendors for that service. Cheap is cheap.

The old argument for why IBM PCs (pre-Lenovo) cost more than a competitor was that they guaranteed the supply chain to exist when a repair was needed across your whole fleet of deployed machines.

Similarly, Winnebago RVs have a specific quirky reputation that the manufacturer holds on to molds of all previous products essentially forever, so they can re-manufacture parts to things that haven't been in stock for years.

Insert obligatory Poorly Made in China ref[0].

It is a great read and surprisingly (scarily so) still relevant. I do however take issue with the title (clickbaity), it is a tad repetitive and sometimes very insightful while one paragraph later it reads like the authors first 10mins in China.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poorly_Made_in_China

Edit: note, the tricks described in this book are not exclusive to china.

Must cost a fortune for business to operate in such a low trust environment.

Free market types take note: good regulation and “red tape” can actually help free enterprise

Isn't this a matter of tort law rather than regulation?

> it appears that the Chabuduo mindset [1] is a very real thing.

Sounds like “fail fast, fail often.”

A strict "do not trust" because BOOM! Do not trust. Wow, and we are betting the bank on this type of garbage.

>This is all common knowledge, proven by example after example that it's necessary to have zero trust.

I still remember in 2012 - 2013, when I suggested exactly that, someone on HN replied and suggested I was racist.

And if you're really clever about this you do it dockside, in China.

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This seems to be startlingly contrast to all the talks about "US manufacturers are absolutely doomed w/o Chinese vendors' great products and quality control" when Trump increased the tariffs.

I can only find https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY but earlier this year it was all over YouTube.

> This seems to be startlingly contrast

Only to someone not involved with Chinese manufacturing.

It's not too hard to find good manufacturers that you can trust. If you do, they will be operating with this same mindset, completely distrusting everyone else. Great! You're done, right? Well sure, until management changes (this happened to us once).

Suppliers are always low/no trust unless you’re a sucker.

The only difference is that is more difficult to hold Chinese suppliers accountable. Americans will happily cheat you as well.

Not sure what you have had to deal with but that is not my experience at all. More often than not any issues I have had with suppliers is my purchasing department was the one trying to get lower cost goods without getting engineering and Vendor QC involved.

I have never had to deal with an American supplier "downsizing" wire from one guage to the next smaller for example.

Nor as linked above, including extra electronics to exfiltrate credit card data from terminals.

>"Americans will happily cheat you as well."

I did not have too much experience with US manufacturers. I however can talk about Canada and Brasil. My experience with Brasil was stellar. Canada - you better fucking watch. As for China - I did order directly high power DC/DC converters. Those were available in the US and China. China came 10 times cheaper ($25 vs $250 apiece). The devices where we have installed those still work like a charm more than a decade after.

Chinese manufacturing 10+ years ago is completely different to Chinese manufacturing in 2025. the other comment about "zero trust" is significantly more apt

It’s always different 10 years ago, though, isn’t? Everything is. Rose colored glasses and all.

I remember these exact same “Chinese quality” threads 10 years ago and they read pretty much the same as this one, complete with the “well 10 years ago I got great stuff” and “yeah 10 years ago was different”.

Cycles, man. Cycles.

Another explanation could be that things have continued to degrade.

That sounds like very specific anecdata for Canada vs Brazil.

It is. I am pretty sure examples of this and that exist in either country. I am just telling my own very narrow impression.

Did you miss the "it's still cheaper then building in the US" part?

US manufacturers aren't doomed: they already don't exist, and the infrastructure needed to support them also does not exist.

Smarter Every Day had a very interesting video about trying to make a reasonably simple barbecue tool entirely in the US.

Close to impossible without a serious time investment and dedication.

I didn't hear a single person talking about wanting or needing China's great quality control. Are you sure there's a conflict here? I think you oversimplified when you were listening to what people were saying.

Amprius has released a statement:

> Amprius Technologies, Inc. has never developed or manufactured batteries for power banks. For accuracy, please attribute the certification issue to Apex (Wuxi), not Amprius. Recent reports have incorrectly linked Amprius Technologies, Inc. to a battery certification issue. The company involved is Apex (Wuxi) Co., Ltd., formerly known as Amprius (Wuxi) Co., Ltd., a Chinese lithium battery manufacturer based in Wuxi, China.

> Apex (Wuxi) was once a subsidiary of Amprius Inc. but was never part of Amprius Technologies, Inc. In early 2022, Apex was spun off, renamed, and has operated independently since, with no ties or relationships to Amprius Technologies, Inc.

(source: https://www.gizchina.com/2025/07/14/anker-baseus-romoss-amon...)

According to the recall notice, these powerbanks were "manufactured between January 1st, 2016, and October 30th, 2019" [0], so that was very much during the time before this says that they were spun out into a separate company.

Going from that last quote, they would in fact have been made and sold by Apex(Inc) at the time it was a subsidiary of Amprius Inc. and claiming otherwise seems like deliberate deception.

Their own website makes clear that Amprius Technologies Inc and Apex (Wuxi) are related in the description of their CEO, who served as CEO of both companies simultaneously. [1]

[0] https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall

[1] https://ir.amprius.com/company-information/executive-team

Shenanigans.

Spun it off in 2022 after the issue was known. Stay classy.

Anker should know better by this point. Changing specs without notifying customers is the basic formula of every Chinese manufacturer. They must have gotten lazy with their internal QA/QC processes and random sampling.

It clearly isn't the "basic formula" if it was so out of the norm it caused a national controversy and got the vendor's certifications removed. Your bitterness is showing.

No this is honestly par for the course in China - saying this as someone who manufactures millions of consumer devices there annually. You have to CONSTANTLY QA supplier materials to make sure no corners were cut.

We have an entire lab just to test upstream components (which LiPO pouch cells are part of) and most of the out-of-spec cases were suppliers changing components or assembly tooling/process. We had DC motors that were failing prematurely in products and after some forensic investigation found that the supplier changed the stator wiring to a nominally smaller diameter which was overheating and burning out - and they added more metal to the casing so they would weigh the same.

While I'm sympathetic to this sort of reasoning, there are many, many examples (even in the US!) of bad behavior being so commonplace that it's expected, and no one gets punished until one sticks out enough (or fucks up hard enough) to force the local authorities to actually pay attention and slap them on the wrist. In this particular case, I think it's entirely within what we would expect from the CCP to say "you got caught and made China look bad, you're going to face consequences".

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Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Or the changes weren't immediately visible externally.

No, quality control is never based on external packaging, for anything*, since quality control is about the objective quality of the final product: if you're not measuring it, you're not controlling that parameters quality. For batteries, this includes things like x-ray to verify all the layer geometries and assembly, materials, etc [1].

[1] Battery tester: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IE3npEcuc

*unless the product is visible external packaging.

First off, I love Luma Field. Always incredible to see what's going on inside things. Even just fun to scroll through their Twitter.

Second, Anker is one of the few companies I actually have a very high trust for. A few years back I bought a wall charger[0] from them, it has 2 USB-C and a Type A. A month in, one of the Type-C ports wouldn't charge if the other port was being used. If you send a support ticket they annoyingly give you a response with very basic trouble shooting. But if you respond to that you get a person. They just sent me a new one right away (<10 days) and there was no need to return the charger or anything. So I still use it, just blocked the bad port. I gotta say, whenever I encounter good customer service I become loyal.

I wanted to say this because I think a quality matters. Quality often takes nuances and this can often run counter to maximizing profits (Lemon Markets and all that). Looking at Luma's report, I don't get the indication that they had this issue because they were cutting corners but looks like it must be upstream[1]. But am happy to see they were giving gift cards along with the recall. Companies should minimize mistakes as best as they can, but it is important to judge them by how they handle mistakes. It can be easy to get caught in the negativity but I personally don't think I'll stop buying Anker products.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Q52CXX1

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44639759

Anker is above average, but the bar for average when it comes to Chinese electronics is, "might not burn down your house immediately."

For reasons probably bordering on OCD, I watch a LOT of teardown videos of various electronics. And one thing that always strikes me is how a company with a product will routinely and often change what's inside, while the model number and exterior appearance stays the same.

For example, I wanted to buy a big 12V LiFePo4 battery and all of the cheapest ones are on Amazon. Amazon reviews are generally garbage because they're all borderline fake (from useless Viners, or wanna-be useless Viners). The only "honest" reviews of these I could find were YouTube teardowns where they basically have to destroy the case in order to take it apart. I would watch a teardown of one popular battery, and then run across a different teardown of the same model from someone else and the internals of each would be completely different. Completely different cells, battery management board, wires, construction everything. But they both looked identical on the outside.

Finished product manufacturers in China rarely have a consistent supply chain. They are negotiating suppliers and batches of components constantly, and are constantly re-engineering everything about the product, except for the external appearance of the case. This Luma Field article confirms what I've already run across myself.

This is also obvious if you think about installing OpenWRT on a router. You'll quickly find out that there's often various versions of the same product; it used to be that they would mark it somewhere, but that doesn't always happen anymore, and only some versions are compatible.

i dont mind double-sourcing components, as long as it passes the QC/QA and certifications.

Even Apple iphone(tbf, also made in China) double-source important components inside their phone(modem)

> Even Apple iphone(tbf, also made in China) double-source important components inside their phone(modem)

Samsung goes a bit further. Depending on where you buy e.g. a S23 FE, you'll get entirely different SoC architectures - the US model ships with Qualcomm Snapdragon, the international model with Samsung Exynos.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S23

At least Samsung is using different model numbers for that. And it's not exactly supposed to be hidden since they support different frequencies.

> For reasons probably bordering on OCD, I watch a LOT of teardown videos of various electronics.

Do you have any reccs you enjoy watching? Asking for a friend :)

They just sent me a new one right away (<10 days) and there was no need to return the charger or anything. So I still use it, just blocked the bad port. I gotta say, whenever I encounter good customer service I become loyal.

They are good with returns/replacements. My experience with their product quality has been less good though. I had a pair with earbuds from them, I think it had some firmware issue where on an Android phone, volume would go from far too soft to 'blow your eardrums out'. No other buds had this issue with the same phone. They sent me a replacement which was fine, but it could certainly have caused hearing loss.

I also had an USB-C adapter from them (one of those USB-C with power passthrough, HDMI, etc.) it was so badly shielded that no WiFi or Bluetooth connection near it would survive.

I think people generally rave about them because the among very cheap/affordable Chinese vendors they have support that actually writes back and are helpful. The quality of their products is not great though (also see all these power bank recalls). I avoid them now.

Does not mean that all western brands are great either. My wife bought a Satechi USB-C adapter with DP-Alt mode that Satechi claimed would support 4k@60Hz. There was no way to get it running on Mac or non-Mac at 4k@60Hz. So, I did more research based on the MAC address of the device and found that it just a 'recased' version of a $20 Chinese USB-C design (which was specced to only support 4k@30Hz). Not only were Satechi just selling a rebadged USB-C adapter, they didn't even take the effort to check whether the specs that they claim to support are supported (luckily I could return it within 30 days). Also see: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness/ (in which they find that an Anker adapter is probably a rebadged Ce-Link design)

Edit: found my original Satechi rant, including my experiences with their support: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30907221

I feel like a lot of people have stories like this about Anker, which makes me think they have good customer service, but shit quality.

I've found Anker good although when I tried to use my 'lifetime warranty' on a broken USB C to lighting cable I got some run around from an LLM before swearing at them and getting a result. Even so they last longer than the genuine Apple ones.

FWIW, I think their charger has some built-in protection that will disable a port under certain condition as a prevention (I forgot the details).

If you try their provided troubleshooting instructions, your port may return normal again. Worth give it a try.

I don't know about the rest of their products, but their over-ear headphones (Q45 being one specific example) have very weak attachment of the cup to the frame that often cracks and then breaks withing several months of use. This has been well known for at least a decade, and they have done nothing to fix it.

Sounds like they have alright customer service, if you live in a region where it is actually available (not me), and don't care about polluting the environment with yet more short-lived plastic trash. Not really something to support with one's hard-earned money IMHO.

I mean I wouldn't trust them at all personally. https://www.theverge.com/23573362/anker-eufy-security-camera...

And it seemed the main issue as identified by Luna was not with the cells but the bank design itself.

> If the recall is affecting units made with 18650 battery cells from multiple suppliers, that suggests the root cause of the recall stems from elsewhere in the power bank. We next focused on the PCB and assembly of the board with the cells.

> We can measure the distance to quantify how dramatically the gap between the positive and negative bus bars varies across the three units. In PB1, that distance is only 0.52 mm

But it is still upstream since AFAIK Anker just rebrands other products.

I've had my share of spicy pillows ranging from iPad to power bank from upstart company which became spicy after using it for just 3 times[1].

I've been overly cautious of batteries for several years now, I charge my devices with 1A charger and keep it between 40% to 80% . I now carry a single 18650 cell power bank instead of those 10,000 mAh, 20,000mAh power banks.

I don't sleep with phone, tablet or kindle on bed and I force my partner to do the same to her irritation. Last week her MacBook became spicy overnight and I had to rush to Apple Store morning, the price for battery replacement was more than the price of that MacBook in used market so I had to buy a new MacBook.

I miss the good old days where I could take the battery of the Nokia phone and spin it on the table to see if it's become spicy. I pray to EU gods to please force the manufactures to bring back user replaceable batteries.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/s/fMNcm07aT2

Your prayers have been (partially) heard. The EU Battery Regulation of 2023 demands that starting February 2027 batteries in all devices have to be user-replaceable with commercially available tools (or for watertight devices or some special device categories replaceable by an independent professional), that replacement batteries have to be available at reasonable prices and that use of third party batteries should not be prevented

Lobbyists have worked hard to weaken the regulation, but it should still be a major improvement over the status quo

Thank you EU, Although I don't live there I'm hoping the manufacturers wouldn't take the effort to make EU specific models of their devices and the benefits are reaped throughout the world.

doubt it, apple still does usb-c only for europe and the rest is stuck at lightning connectors.

That is not true, unless you are referring to devices outside of the iPad and iPhone (which even that I can't find evidence of)? Those went usb-c at the same time globally (by model)

So that's wrong but I'm particularly focused on the word "still". How long are you under the impression they've been doing this?

Is your house especially warm? I’m not doubting that it happened but I’ve had very different experiences (one battery problem in a couple decades) and am curious what might explain the difference other than bad luck.

I live in India, both in North and South at different times of the year and yes it does get extremely hot during summer but I've been very careful and monitor battery temps at all time.

My theory is just I've had a bad luck with batteries.

Interesting, that does sound like terrible luck.

This honestly sounds like the electricity service line into your place is fucked slightly and it is gradually destroying your electronics.

And/or a particularly hot climate. Some environmental effect either way.

To damage batteries it would have to get through two separate power converters. I'm skeptical of that.

I regularly check the electrical outlets and the main supply; it's mostly just my bad luck.

Amazon sent me a recall notice about this one, indicating they had it from my purchase history, but oddly I couldn't find it in my own collection of power banks, or in the ones I gave to my wife. I'm worried I might have purchased one for another family member as a gift and not remembered who.

The recall is concerning, especially since once they started with the one, they quickly added several more to the list. I've ordered at least 17 Anker products over the last ten years (not all of them power banks). I pay the premium over cheaper external batteries, and I have advised my family in the past to do the same. This is ostensibly because they are supposed to be the guys that don't explode. If I can't even take that for granted, then there's really no reason to maintain customer loyalty. There are countless other, cheaper brands available online from no-name Chinese companies.

Those random brands that flood amazon (TYUOIT or ERYWERP) are dispensable brands in part because it allows them to discharge the company if something like a recall becomes necessary.

Part of the price of cheap shit.

Anker on the other hand is a recognizable name with a brand image. So they need to do right to keep their trust.

FWIW my random brand that I purchased was also part of this recall.

Given the upstream cell manufacturer is involved, it would not escape reason many other no name brands might be involved ...

How did you find out? I recently bought a no-name battery pack and have no idea if it's at risk.

Amazon sent me a push notification offering me a refund if I promised to destroy it. But notably it was only for one of the several such identical packs I ordered.

They also do recalls. Which I’m certain is more than some cheaper no name brands do.

I only buy portable Li-ion batteries from manufacturers with a history of product recalls in my country or directly from major retailers that regularly recall defective products.

I also only buy portable battery models that I believe will sell or has sold many thousands of units so any widespread manufacturering defects should become apparent sooner.

Yeah, I see your point, never thought of it that way.

Just also darkly hilarious — “I only buy <PRODUCT> with a history of product recalls”.

There was a time in which we used to avoid such things…

Reminds me of the survivorship bias exposed by Abraham Wald:

https://medium.com/@christian.dobbert/the-missing-bullet-hol...

And they might pay from now on closer attention. Expensive lesson learned?

For now I don't avoid them, yet. Definitely not switching to a random cinese brand instead.

I got a recall notice from Amazon also but I couldn’t find a part number match on my Anker powerbanks.

fwiw: You can see when you bought it in your Amazon purchases list, it might help you remember. For example, if you bought it just before someone's birthday date...

,

Locating the physical product is the problem, not the purchase record.

This scrutiny actually makes me more inclined to buy Anker products. There's more trust in a company that will transparently communicate, correct mistakes and raise the safety bar for future products. It also brings to light issues with other manufacturers in the supply chain.

I had one of the affected models. I filled out the recall form yesterday, and they emailed me this morning to let me know the replacement has been sent. They are pretty good about standing behind their products

I think the CT scan tech is cool and the article is written nicely but I don't get the point of this article. Seems like if Anker were using the CT scanner, they still wouldn't be able spot the change. I'm confused.

The article authors didn’t want to physically destroy 5 products just to see if anything changed.

Would you want to tear down Lithium batteries??? It’s slightly hazardous…

The article authors sell 3d scanning products, so a more plausible explanation is that the whole point of the article is to promote that.

Even though this is a recall, a bad thing, it actually makes me more likely to buy from Anker than a no-name brand on Amazon. Those no-name brands almost definitely have problems like this (or worse), but we rarely hear about them.

I read the article linked above with all of the testing they did to identify the cause, I'd definitely have no trouble buying from them in the future.

Reminiscent of the tylenol case study, handled a tough situation correctly and it's still on the shelf.

Eh. Anker did the bare minimum to address their liability.

They won’t pay for devices that Amazon says are in scope, but the black on black serial number is illegible.

For devices that are covered, they advise you to not dispose of them at a retailer like Home Depot that accepts lithium batteries, but provides no means to safely dispose of this fire hazard. So I got my $40 payment, but I assume now that will disclaim any liability when my house or car goes on fire while I try to find a facility that accepts dangerous batteries.

Honestly, when shopping no-name slop I'm seeking out products that don't have batteries, or at least don't have powerful ones (non-vibrating game controllers are probably pretty safe). One less risk.

100%... I'm seeking products that take AA or AAA batteries instead of built-in lithium batteries, for the same reason.

I wish more devices took field-replaceable cylindrical Li-ion cells. They're pretty common in flashlights and rare in other products where they would be advantageous.

It would be awesome if we were able to get more things besides vapes (and apparently some flashlights; I assume there are many niches where they are common) to use 18650 or even 21700 li-ion cells. I see most people I know buy AAs by the pallet and go through them regularly for their controllers, led lights, kids toys, etc.. and few I believe bother to dispose of them correctly.

Also, repeating your sentiment, for all the tech gadgets.. bluetooth speakers, I'm looking at you.. why not have replaceable batteries for those? There have to be enough vapers now that the knowledge of this type of battery as distinct from the old alkaline ones has passed into mainstream consciousness. This would be a huge selling feature for me.

The reasons I see are that it is because the rechargable li-ion are more dangerous and a fire hazard, but is this really true? As with most anything that can carry a risk if misused, I can find a few dozen instances where a vape battery went awry, but surely the benefits outweigh the concerns?

Edit: I do understand the irony of saying this on a post about when they do go boom.

The market for the end product (and the risk aversion of the manufacturer) makes a difference.

Flashlight and vape enthusiasts are mostly adults who likely trend as all three of: older and more knowledgeable, more likely to take and accept risks, and more willing to pay a premium for the benefits of replaceable batteries... and the companies that make vapes and high-powered enthusiast flashlights are probably less worried about a customer suing them over a battery issue than a large toy manufacturer. If you're a vape company, you have bigger safety issues to worry about -- like the normal operation of your products :)

> and few I believe bother to dispose of them correctly.

There are no mercury alkalines anymore for general consumer use, those collection bins were removed from stores in the 90's and they can be disposed of with normal waste.

I actually have a Bluetooth speaker that takes a removable 18650. It was branded "Polaris V8", but I think it's a white label product that's no longer in production. It still works, and most other ten year old Bluetooth speakers probably don't.

I'm with you on the risk/benefit calculation. E-waste is bad, and the option to bring a spare battery makes a lot of products more useful. A Li-ion cell can be dangerous if mishandled, but less so than a jug of gasoline or larger power tools.

This can be considerably mitigated by sticking a protection circuit on the end of a cell, which makes it no more dangerous than the proprietary Li-ion batteries used in things like cameras.

I didn't know many were still buying alkaline AAs in large quantities. I've been using LSD NiMH AAs and AAAs for I think more than 15 years and haven't looked back. They seem to work with everything.

There's still lots of poorly produced electronics that treat NiMH that is within its normal operating voltage as being out of juice, and either nag you or shut down completely. My supposedly high quality Logitech mouse is one example (probably not buying anything from Logitech ever again, they're one of those brands that are coasting on their old credibility).

If it runs on two batteries in series and you're willing to take a risk, you can get a 3.7V 14500 battery and then a dumb fake straight wire battery in there. Gives you 1.85V per-slot instead of the normal 1.5, which might be too much for the device, but beats the pants out of the 1.2V you get from NiMH AAs.

I got 14500s for my Logitech F710 game controllers, and then drilled a hole in the battery compartment of the controller to make them plug-in chargeable. I've only just played with them a few times - no guarantee this is a long-term solution, but it seems to work well for now.

Note that this does mean you'll have a bin of things that look like AAs but might cause a fire or melt if you put them into the wrong thing that accepts AA batteries (like the just-a-wire-fake-batteries have allcaps warnings about never ever putting them into a charger).

It actually gives you 2.1V per slot because a fully charged standard Li-ion cell is 4.2V. This is also sketchy because it will likely over-discharge the cell below 2.5V if not monitored carefully. Over-discharge makes it dangerous to charge the cell again.

Actual protected 14500s will be too long in most devices meant for AA, but it's possible to find protected 14430 cells marked as "14500" from some flashlight brands like Acebeam and Skilhunt. Those are safe with regard to over-discharge, but the voltage of a fully charged cell might still damage devices not rated for it.

I'd rate this modification as risky and only suitable for people with significant battery expertise.

Edit: saw the other comment mentioning 14500s with USB ports. These will be protected against short circuit and over-discharge, and are actually based on 14430 cells.

Ah, thanks! Good to know I dodged that bullet by blind luck. I had picked up a couple of USB-port charged version of one of those old chubby non-rechargeable lithium batteries that were used in early LED flashlights (CR2 I think) to resurrect some old steel LED flashlights I found in a drawer, and got funny fantasies about doing other devices this way.

I saw some articles and ads for doing it using 3.1V LiFePO4 batteries but I couldn't find any of those with USB charge-ports... I guess your warnings are why you're supposed to use the 3.1V Li-phosphates for that. So I went with the 3.7V LiIon because I really wanted that port.

I guess I dodged a bullet. Thanks for the warning. I actually did systems engineering as an undergrad (though I just work in software) so that makes me a bit overconfident with electronics even though I don't know jack about battery chemistry besides the basic theory. I'll be more careful on research next time I undertake this kind of project.

It seems like you might be looking for "1.5V Li-ion AA", which is a 14430 with a buck converter stuck on the end.

I have pretty much the opposite preference regarding charging: I'd much rather swap in a charged spare and stick the drained battery in a slot charger than charge batteries inside devices. There's no waiting that way.

A device that won't work with NiMH due to voltage will also only use about a third of the energy in an alkaline. Poorly produced is an understatement.

My Logitech G604 works fine on NiMH. The calibration for reporting battery charge as a percentage is off, but it runs for months.

As an aside, pretty much all the g604 is will end up with double click reliability issues or an inability to hold down the mouse button and drag. But you can easily replace the switches or there's vendors on eBay and AliExpress that I'll sell you a circuit board with the switches pre-soldered for replacement.

Logitech no longer makes the g604 :(

I have a g302 sitting in a drawer on my to-do list for similar double-clicky switches replacement.

I read that before I bought one. I have a screwdriver and a soldering iron.

If you can replace the battery, they can't sell you a new one.

Bingo!

A fun trick is that if you're sure the batteries are in series you can sometimes swap out a pair of AA batteries for a 3.7V 14500 Lithium rechargeable and a fake AA battery (just a wire in an AA-sized plastic shell). Drill a hole in the battery-cover of the device where the 14500's USB port is and now your device is plug-in rechargeable, assuming it can handle 3.7V instead of the normal ~3.1V that comes from a pair of AAs (which isn't a huge stretch). Worked for my old Logitech game controllers.

Downside is that you've got parts in your bin that are dangerous because they look like AA batteries but could cause damage or even fires if somebody put them into the wrong AA thing. Make sure to mark the batteries loudly. I've electrical-taped the pairs together to prevent this problem.

I have a headlamp for hiking with a slightly different take on this.

It will take 3x ordinary or rechargeable cells, or it will take it's Li-Ion pack that is the same size as the 3 cells side by side. Designed in from the start so there are no dangerous bits. Hiking headlamps are something where you do *not* want to be left with a dead battery!

A headlamp that can run on either AA or 14500 tends to be a better approach than this. Those proprietary batteries are usually pretty expensive compared to a 14500, and three AAAs as spares aren't nearly as convenient as one AA.

There are a handful of these on the market and they're not common in retail stores. I'm fond of the Skilhunt H150.

Follow up on this: from conversation elsewhere, another important safety tip is to get the 14500s with fancy electronics incl a USB port, because without that the battery will be a fire-hazard in this kind use.

That's probably an advantage for people who know what they're doing, and more dangerous for people who don't.

That's true, but it's pretty common to stick a protection circuit on the end of a cell, making it similarly safe to the proprietary Li-ion batteries that power cameras and the like.

It's also common to not put protection on the end of an 18650, which is probably a big reason we don't see more of these in user-serviceable devices. Even if you ship a device with a protected cell, the inherent implication of an 18650 socket is that someone is going to buy a cell from somewhere else and stick it in there. (and maybe throw a few in their junk drawer along with some loose change and rusty silverware)

Perhaps one of the things that should be included in right to repair legislation is stronger liability protection in cases where a third-party battery is installed in a device.

I do often stick unprotected cells in flashlights that came with protected ones. It's important to know whether the flashlight can over-discharge the cell, but most can't, and it's important to not short-circuit them. I suggest people who don't want to learn about batteries stick with protected.

Eh... I strongly disagree... We shouldn't let companies put out products that burn parents' house down because grandma didn't research 18650 protection circuits when she bought the grandkids some batteries for their toy on Amazon.

Consumer product safety regulation is written in blood, and exists for a very good reason.

Let the advanced right-to-repair audience open up the device with a screwdriver and install a new LiPo pouch. We don't need a battery door to let kids in like it's as safe as AAs in a gameboy.

For products intended for kids, I like the idea of a screw on the battery door.

The screw on the battery door is typically a choking hazard mitigation. The idea being, if you know how to use a screwdriver, you are skilled enough to not eat the battery.

I think there’s still a big chasm between that level of skill and knowing there’s a difference between protected and unprotected 18650s… or even knowing what an 18650 is at all. Most people have never heard of them.

The right-to-repair “I know what I’m doing” crowd can disassemble the device as long as it isn’t glued shut.

Other mitigations are possible, such as a battery compartment designed for cells that are 69mm long, as is typical for protected cells instead of 65mm. I'll admit I complain about this when reviewing a flashlight (use longer springs so it's not picky), but it's likely the right choice for many applications.

It's not the right choice for all applications of course. Products intended for children and that are particularly demanding in terms of electrical power require greater caution than speakers or most flashlights.

A battery compartment that is "almost the right size" is going to encourage unfamiliar users to do stupid things.

https://budgetlightforum.com/t/my-18650-batteries-are-about-...

> The batteries that come with the light are perfect, but all the panasonic 18650s I have purchased are about 1/8 (3mm) too short.

> I was thinking of using aluminum foil.

If people on enthusiast forums are struggling to put batteries in their devices safely, the mass market is doomed. Proper safety engineering is to design a device in a way where foreseeable misuse by a layperson does not result in a safety issue.

This isn't incompatible with a right to repair. Just simply don't glue the device shut. The LiPos used in many devices are common jelly-bean components.

I don't think it should be required that devices protect users from unsafe modifications even if they're foreseeable. I can also tape down the safety bar on the lawnmower, remove the guards from the circular saw, and take the firing pin block out of the gun. I'm sure people have done all of those things, and some have regretted it.

What I'm advocating is a bit beyond just repairability; field-replaceable batteries the ability to charge spares externally, and the ability to share spares between devices are substantial benefits.

There's a liability issue here.

You must have a charge controller in Li-Ion between each voltage point because overcharging a cell is asking for trouble.

Sealed battery pack, you can put a little controller in there with it. Loose cell, you either give up some capacity and add some cost by putting a controller in each cell, or you trust that the controller in whatever charges it is good. Bare cell, good charger, fine. Bare cell, iffy charger, you might get the blame when the cell goes up. Thus it's very hard to find good bare cells.

There's a flurry of battery holders that accept 21700 cells, but the power delivery is just too weak IMHO.

From memory, the max output was about 20~30W for the bigger models [0]. For 2 cell types it gives 10W, so barely good enough to slowly charge a smartphone.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/PLCPDM/dp/B0DFPKXQZ1

You can get these for 18650s as well.

Most of them use rails though, so different cell chemistries are a bit of a risk over time.

I agree, but specifically LFP cells rather then NMC. Less likely to get angry. (My laptop uses these and I appreciate it all the time.)

LFP capacity is terrible. LMFC is a recent development which closes that gap; it's still heavier than NMC or NCA, but that's a worthwhile tradeoff in many applications.

I have a couple devices (LDK portable game console, Sihuadon AM/FM radio) that take a Nokia BL-5C, but ~1000 mAh is fairly small.

Same, but different. I have bought maybe hundreds of rechargeable AA/AAA batteries over the last ten years, and chased as exclusively as possible devices without built-in rechargeable batteries.

Anything with a built-in battery is nearly always e-waste within 3 years, while I've had AA/AAA devices that are 5-10 years old that are fine.

Pop the batteries out when in storage, never need to wait for it to recharge (just rotate in new batteries), use disposable batteries from the corner shop in an emergency.

Exactly. I still use portable flash units (speed lights) that are now well over 20 years old, while a lot of the newer units have built-in batteries that will fail in just a few years. And it's an extreme example, but I still use my Game Boy DMG, which is a 36 year old device.

All electronic devices are eventually e-waste, but devices that use AA/AAA can last decades longer. I only buy something with a lithium ion battery when there is almost literally no alternative (essentially phone and laptop).

If they have flat batteries you could be safe if they are LiFePO which are quite hard to light on fire. YMMV depending on the actual battery. Usually the come from batches of old phones which went out of production are put into these kind of things since they can be bought on the cheap.

If they put in a round cell I'd stay away. I usually replace the cell with one I know is good and check the circuit for protection. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen something with no over or undervolt protection whatsoever.

> if they are LiFePO

No phones use this chemistry. I have no idea what you're on about.

>Wouldn't be the first time I've seen something with no over or undervolt protection whatsoever.

Even the cheapest lithium ion charge controllers have overvolt protection by the nature of how they work. What can happen however is a controller could be specced to charge to 4.3V per cell and a 4.2V cell is instead installed. This is a problem.

>> if they are LiFePO > No phones use this chemistry. I have no idea what you're on about.

I thought we were discussing a power bank not a phone.

They made the claim manufacturers used batteries that were old stock for phones. Again, I don't know what they are on about.

I've seen some teardowns and power supplies are another place where the no-name slop is spooky.

I am not sure that no-name batteries are that more dangerous. A common reason batteries catch fire is when things are too densely packed, causing shorts. A famous case is the Galaxy Note 7, which is Samsung, not Chinese tech.

No-name batteries are often way lower capacity than advertised, which means less stuff, and therefore less densely packed and less stuff to burn.

I am not saying that these batteries are safer, or that it is not a scam, but the fact that these batteries are lower capacity can compensate for the sketchy build. Power electronics is another story, so while the battery may be ok, the charging circuit may not.

> A common reason batteries catch fire is when things are too densely packed, causing shorts. A famous case is the Galaxy Note 7, which is Samsung, not Chinese tech.

Note 7 thing was a faulty velding line. And no x-ray quality checks.

These days there's lots of news about no-name ebikes and battery-powered scooters catching on fire, so maybe it depends on how you get that battery?

That's mostly related to them being rather dumb across the connection to the charger, instead of having the charge controller integrated with the battery management system. Plus probably cheaper overall construction because a higher percentage is spent on just energy capacity from economy of scale at the pack level (more cells per pack: less overhead from other components when normalized per-cell). Doesn't help that they'd prefer to keep the grid voltage out of the metal framed vehicle, and there's economic incentives to regulate the charging voltage/current at the transformer directly without any intermediate voltage like USB.

Maybe using USB-PD signaling for the finely adjustable voltage modes (PPS/AVS) could help though, at least if USB-PD coding has reasonable range left in the protocol fields there to communicate the entire voltage and current range that such an e-vehicle charger would want. Though there's other readily suitable communication protocols to pick from if USB-PD isn't suitable.

I have two of these powerbanks, one ordered in 2019 and another in 2021. Amazon sent me scary emails saying these things will kill me. Anker's recall site says I'm not affected and the product is safe to use.

I'm not sure who to trust, but I've erred on the side of caution and trashed the batteries. Because it's not worth dying in a fire over $30 in batteries.

I would have just trusted Anker in this case. Amazon only knows you bought that model of battery, not whether it was affected. Anker would (or should) know exactly what range of serials were made with the problematic cells.

Brought them to a special pickup/disposal point? Cause otherwise they will light on fire somewhere else.

> I've erred on the side of caution and trashed the batteries

How is throwing a potentially damaged lithium battery into the trash, where no batteries of any kind should go, cautious?

No idea where GP lives, but in lots of places there's simply no other option. Your best bet is to discharge the battery as far as you can make it, and then dump it with the rest of the trash. I don't have anyone willing to accept any batteries for recycling withing a few thousand kilometers. And yes, Amazon ships here just fine.

The scary thing is you can't put the fire out with water. Your only option is to run.

You can't put the lithium itself out with water, but presumably water would still keep everything around it from burning?

It's not the lithium that's burning - it's first the electrolyte, typically ethylene carbonate, which decomposes the cathode - a process that releases oxygen, which in turn fuels the fire.

There's actually very little lithium by weight in li-ion batteries.

> Your only option is to run.

That is not true. Please don't spread misinformation that could lead to deaths or people losing everything they own.

You can put out a Lithium battery fire with a class-D fire extinguisher. If you don't have one available, you can isolate the burning battery by surrounding it with sand or other inert, dry substances to keep it from spreading until the fire department arrives with proper equipment to dispose of or extinguish it.

You forgot having a fume hood, or halon foam system. Or just a silver heat resistant suit and SCBA. Please don't hold back on the pedantry and "you can"s. People might miss these valuable options and not know they can just coexist with the lithium fire right next door!

Are you trying to imply that "sand or other inert, dry substances" are too exotic to be in an average house?

Also you can keep things near the battery wet.

So what, you keep a bucket of sand in your bedroom?

I didn't say it was in the same room. I just disagree with "your only option is to run".

You’re not making convincing arguments, frankly.

Instead of being upset and lashing out when someone corrects you and offers important advice that can save lives, you can just say "Thank you for the information." - or even say nothing at all.

There's no curiosity or intellect featured here anymore. It's just bickering about semantics or pedantry. If that doesn't anger you, great. That's like a toddler saying they don't mind sharing a pool with other kids who urinate in it. That's your preference, not mine. Sorry for rubbing your face in your own drivel.

Enough water will suppress the fire and deprive it of heat for thermal runaway and keep nearby items from catching fire.

If you stop the water, it may reignite or smolder and produce smoke, but water will work to combat the fire.

Will it emit hydrogen gas?

Water won't put it out but putting it in a big enough container of water and leaving it there long enough works. You just need a big enough energy sink + containment.

Note that they have another recall for other models going, though their language for those sounds somewhat less dramatic compared to what they used for the PowerCore 10000. More of a "covering our assess" recall than a "holy shit we might be liable for lots of damage" recall.

https://www.anker.com/rc2506

I had a Powercore III Sense 10K (I think), which doesn’t appear on that list, swell on me recently. It’s one of my newer batteries and I bought from Anker trusting their reputation and past purchases. I purchased their Soundcore earbuds, which failed to charge after a few weeks. I don’t think I have any cables from them anymore as they’ve all failed as quickly (or more quickly) than less expensive options.

My current perspective, recall or not, is their quality is no different from the alphabet soup companies selling identical looking (and possibly identical) items.

It seems like the overheating issue is “not thier fault,” but part of being a trusted brand isn’t just recalling but vetting suppliers and the components they receive.

I guess this serves as an ad for Lumafield's x-ray machines. I have no use for one but those scans are stunning.

killer way to market a product.

Here's a blog post with interesting information that just so happens to advertise how you can use our product

It's funny, because this is just a description of content marketing. But most companies forget step 1, which is to make the content interesting.

Yes, Lumafield does some of my favorite marketing ever. It adds more (absolute) value to the world than they receive back from it. Their monthly CT scans are some of my favorite small joys: https://www.scanofthemonth.com/

I mean, there's probably very good ROI on this marketing; I'm not saying they're foolish or selfless. Just that it doesn't cost them that much to do, so it's a win-win for everyone.

Last updated scan of the month... August 2023?

Lumafield co-founder and CEO here. Stay tuned - we’re bringing SotM back!

Please and thank you!

Oh no, not super promising. I only know learnt of Lumafield and I'm very impressed, would love to see more updates on what the company is up to.

They're still posting stuff to their blog https://www.lumafield.com/blog

But will it blend?

actually no let's not blend the lithium, forbidden inhaled powder

Interestingly, I ended up buying a Blendtec blender many years later when I could afford one because of those YouTube videos. They long-since stopped making them when I finally got one.

It's a liquid.

Lithium is an (albeit soft) solid at room temp. Im not sure there is risk of it becoming powder in a blender but adding water during the blending process (or at any point) would be the main concern for me.

Not in those cells. It's a Lithium salt in a solvent.

Blendtec did it remarkably well

They also moved from a toroidal SMPS to an integrated PMIC for voltage regulation - but that was likely for cost/weight reasons but also hints at being able to more accurately measure and limit the charge or discharge current as a function of the cell temperature. This design is typically less efficient (generates more heat for the same output) so that strongly hints that the overheating issue was not from the pcb/electronics directly and from the cells themselves.

The addition of what I assume is a temperature sensor on the cell in the new design also points to the addition of some charge/discharge regulation based on the active cell temperature that wasn't present in the original model.

Moving from busbar to insulated leads also suggests some recurring issues with bus bar short/contacts but was probably not the cause of the overheating issue as busbars usually have lower resistance and higher current capacity.

If I had to guess I would say the recall was very likely due to cell overheating on high discharge (PD in/out) in high temperature or high insulation (in a backpack or in the sun) situations where there was no thermal feedback from the cell to the controller and the cell was outside of the specification temperature. Thermal runaway is a known issue with lipo cells and can cause cell rupture and combustion.

I've had tons of other packs that have gotten too hot to touch during high charge/discharge and that have "pillowed" up (there is an entire amusingly-named subreddit for shaming cells that have done this... /r/spicypillows) and that is without putting them in a backpack or other insulating environment, or doing so in high ambient temperature. I think anker is likely singled out in the recall because of their size and not necessarily that they made a worse powerbank than most others... but that is only anecdotal based on how many off-brand powerbanks I've seen fail in the same way (bluehive, inui and safuel specifically, to name names) without any recalls or sanctions.

To those saying it was the cell manufacturer (Amprius) that changed the cell specification without notifying buyers... as the one packaging the final component you are responsible for having sufficient safeguards in your QA/testing process and in your final product - you can't pass the blame to your suppliers.

I find myself wondering. Recalled = tab connectors. Not recalled = wire connectors. Old, old batteries. Fatigue due to a lack of flex?

Okay fine, but I still want to see Big Clive ripping one apart and pointing at things with a screw driver.

Nice CT scans, but how about just disassembling the powerbanks? The busbar would be plainly visible…

I had one of those power banks and someone stole it from my bookbag on the beach. Here's hoping they don't hear about the recall!

I also had one "borrowed" by a "friend"...

The article doesn't show pictures of the unit itself, focusing on the CT scan, so here's the recall notice: https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall

That link is redirecting to the home page

It's taking me to the recall page, not sure why it's not working for you.

See also the CPSC link:

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2025/More-than-One-Million-Anke...

(Notably, this page mentions "Anker has received 19 reports of fires and explosions. This includes two reports of minor burn injuries not requiring medical attention and 11 reports of property damage totaling over $60,700." Puts it into context! That's not a house, but with numbers like that, I wonder if a couple cars were destroyed.)

There's also Anker's product recalls main page:

https://www.anker.com/product-recalls

which adds a few other models with different enclosures but presumably with the same upstream manufacturer to the recall.

Anker is very bad at handling country/region redirects correctly. If you're not located in the region the link is pointing at, they'll just redirect you to the home page of whatever region they think you should be looking at.

This is really annoying when trying to find product information because, for example, the Anker Nordics site doesn't have product pages for all the products they sell in Europe, but they won't let you look at product pages from other regions without some VPN shenanigans.

Works for me from the US; it may depend on what region you're in.

I imagine there will be a stunning amount of owners that will either:

A) Keep using it, even if they do hear about the recall

B) Throw it in the trash can

Both will ultimately be true for a disturbing percentage.

I took mine to an Office Depot that "recycled the battery" for free. The guy at the register printed a receipt for having taken it, then took it from me and walked back into the administrative office by the front of the store. I assume it was to take it home. At least I tried...

Places like Staples and Office Depot have actual electronics/battery recycling bins they keep in the back. They aren't in front for anyone to drop stuff in because they limit what they will accept. So not sure why you're assuming he would take it home. I mean it's not impossible but I'd assume he was just putting it in their electronics recycling.

here in Central Europe batteries in the trash can are the cause for massive dumpster fires and explosions (not that often, but there was one just last month, took several days to extinguish the fire [0])

[0]: https://www.theinternational.at/nusdorf%E2%80%90debant-500-f...

This is not just a central europe problem. A bit further west people throw them in the trash as well. Fun and smelly since the garbage truck drivers usually notice it when driving and then dump all trash on the street.

Interestingly from the photo of the device on the recall notice [3], this device doesn't include the C3 mark, which is the regulatory approval marker for inside China.

In the last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of noise [1] about how the regulations [2] about carrying power banks on planes in China got a lot stricter and any powerbank without a C3 mark is prohibited on-board, regardless of size, also any device with the C3 mark that's subject to a recall.

Given the timing of these two events, I suspect that there's some relationship.

[1] https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/flying-with-...

[2] https://english.beijing.gov.cn/latest/news/202506/t20250628_...

[3] https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall

I have recalled S/N powerbank which was bought in another country Anker shop. Unfortunately Anker doesn't allow me to participate recall because I have no buy proof. How many people keep those for powerbanks? They have Anker stores in my country, however there is no way to exchange it in any way. I would be happy to at least have some discout on a new bank, but no.

I have a recalled Anker battery sitting on my stoop, lest it burn my house down. Who on earth (NE USA ideally) will accept this for safe disposal / recycling? Normal battery recycling places don’t want a recalled battery, natch. Serious question, pls help

Contact your local hazardous waste facility or check with Anker directly at anker.com/a1263-recall as they're required to provide free disposal options for recalled products under CPSC regulations.

I wish this was a viable solution. Linked page says, effectively ‘you’re on your own’. My municipality has two events coming up - August and late October, both calendar events say ‘no electronics’. I really don’t get how this is supposed to work.

Hmm, got a PowerCore 10000 here, but Anker's UK site don't seem to have a listed as a recalled model (https://www.anker.com/uk/product-recalls)

Are models sold in some regions different/known-good?

Should probably at least discharge it to be safe(r), I guess.

I also have one (model A1263) bought on Amazon FR. Anker doesn't list it as recalled on their FR site. It lists others though https://www.anker.com/fr/rc2506

Maybe the faulty batteries were only used for some models/regions pairs ?

The RC (Radio Controlled) deal with this all the time. They often wreck huge lipo batteries so they have techniques to discharge them in safe manner. Google or search RC forums.

Ask your local firefighters if their trainees want to see what happens if such a power bank goes up and how to handle it.

Well, the first step is to discharge it and then it’s not gonna burn anybody’s house down

No. A discharged lithium ion battery is still flammable.

Discharged lithium batteries can still catch fire.

They ignored that the temperature sensor had appeared in the unaffected model.

Got a recall notice about my few-months-old 20.000mAh Anker power bank from Amazon, went through Anker's verification process and found out that the S/N of mine isn't in the range of affected devices. Dodged a bullet there, also from past experiences [1] with the company their return/replacement process works well.

[1] e.g. BT earbuds where one side randomly stopped working after a few months, got a replacement after just a few minutes of explanation/verification hassle.

It was fun to explore the CT scan on my own, then read the article to see what was actually identified, and go back to the scan to find those things myself (despite the limitation of having scans from only one unit -- it was still great!). Initially, I thought there were no details of insides of the battery units, but after adjusting the settings, I was able to see the internal layers!

> Anker has recalled 710,00 units from those models in China, and the global numbers have yet to be disclosed.

Should be 710,000, right?

I bought two of these. I have no idea where they are now. Hopefully in such a low SoC that they're not dangerous.

This should just be an empty web page containing solely the text “We don’t know”.

Most battery companies have moved to Li-Po by now. If you have bought a bank with Lithium Ion batteries you should return it.

For some reason I received a recall notice for one of these from Amazon but I don't recognize it and could not find any purchases in my order history. I vaguely recall my wife might have bought something like this years ago as a gift for some one else but our accounts aren't linked.

if the accounts are not linked, how did you receive the recall and not her?

I can only assume our accounts are linked by address and they do the recall notice (at least) by account address. In other words, they aren't linked but kind of are anyway.

they claim it's a complex supply chain with lots of variation.

i say it's a release asap and fix design issues over time, cheaply.

basically the Google school of hardware products.

This is the kind of advertising that I can get behind.

Good luck getting a recall if you used your battery enough to rub off the serial number.

Or at all. Anker will just tell you it's not an affected model even though it clearly meets the recall details.

[dead]

Tldr;

> we don't know exactly what flaw triggered this massive recall

Doesn't Anker use x-rays or similar in the production process?

We only do Xray inspection when doing FA, and not always. They are costly and time consuming.

Sounds like a job for AI ...

I doubt it, that’s some Apple level QA that hardly any company does.

> that’s some Apple level QA

Are you nuts?

X-ray inspection is not that rare, there’s even small assembly houses here (Spain) that can do xray automated inspection.

This has been standard for years to the point I’ve been sent forms for assembly houses RFQ where there are checkboxes for xray inspection, and I haven’t handled a serious assembly development in ~4 years.

What’s new and they’re advertising here is CT, which is another level.

Literally on the same website as this post you'll find testimonials of companies that use CT scanners to find leaks in cosmetics bottles, and to refine the fit of a deodorant cap.

https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/loreal

https://www.lumafield.com/case-studies/case-study-enabling-8...

They do it at pcbway ...

https://www.pcbway.com/pcb_prototype/Automated_X_Ray_Inspect...

Ugh. Please don’t use a bad LLM to write this if you’re going to use an LLM.