Panasonic said Tuesday it is recalling nearly 280,000 battery packs used in one of its tablet PC models after multiple reports that they have burst into flames.
The electronics maker said it received 16 reports of the battery pack used in rugged-use FZ-G1 tablets having combusted between March 2015 and this April, including 12 in North America and one in Japan. It received no reports of injuries.
The company determined the cause to be a short circuit caused by prolonged use in extreme temperatures, and plans to replace the batteries free of charge.
Panasonic has shipped nearly half of the battery packs affected by the latest recall to North America in packages with the tablets.
The company has had similar trouble in the past, recalling hundreds of thousands of battery packs used in its laptop computers as well as those supplied to Sony, Toshiba, and Fujitsu over the last three years.