What went wrong inside recalled Anker PowerCore 10000 power banks?
lumafield.com482 points by walterbell a day ago
482 points by walterbell a day ago
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.