10 ms·

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 notify

by yegle 1y 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 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 https://m.36kr.com/p/3365435892680709

brk 1y ago
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.
- emeraldd 1y ago
  Or the changes weren't immediately visible externally.
  - nomel 1y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IE3npEcuc *unless the product is visible external packaging.
- bazingakiller 1y ago
  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.
  - nsxwolf 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - riehwvfbk 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - tomhow 1y ago
      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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - tgtweak 1y ago
    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.
  - LordDragonfang 1y ago
    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".
nomel 1y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32465780
- yegle 1y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY but earlier this year it was all over YouTube.
  - XorNot 1y ago
    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.
    - subscribed 1y ago
      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.
  - nomel 1y ago
    > 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).
scq 1y ago
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-among-brands-hit-by-mass-power-bank-recalls-in-china-due-to-safety-risks/ https://www.gizchina.com/2025/07/14/anker-baseus-romoss-amon...)
- mr_toad 1y ago
  Shenanigans.
- ralferoo 1y ago
  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 https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall [1] https://ir.amprius.com/company-information/executive-team https://ir.amprius.com/company-information/executive-team
- tgtweak 1y ago
  Spun it off in 2022 after the issue was known. Stay classy.

by yegle 1y ago

brk 1y ago

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.

emeraldd 1y ago
Or the changes weren't immediately visible externally.
- nomel 1y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3IE3npEcuc *unless the product is visible external packaging.
bazingakiller 1y ago
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.
- nsxwolf 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - riehwvfbk 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - tomhow 1y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tgtweak 1y ago
  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.
- LordDragonfang 1y ago
  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".

nomel 1y ago

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

yegle 1y ago
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 https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY but earlier this year it was all over YouTube.
- XorNot 1y ago
  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.
  - subscribed 1y ago
    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.
- nomel 1y ago
  > 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).

scq 1y ago

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-among-brands-hit-by-mass-power-bank-recalls-in-china-due-to-safety-risks/ https://www.gizchina.com/2025/07/14/anker-baseus-romoss-amon...)

mr_toad 1y ago
Shenanigans.
ralferoo 1y ago
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 https://www.anker.com/a1263-recall [1] https://ir.amprius.com/company-information/executive-team https://ir.amprius.com/company-information/executive-team
tgtweak 1y ago
Spun it off in 2022 after the issue was known. Stay classy.