If the wave of overwhelmingly negative reviews wasn't enough, it appears that Humane has discovered another major problem with its once-hyped ai Pin. The company warns customers not to use the device's charging case due to a possible “fire safety risk.”
In an email sent to ai Pin owners, the company said it had received a report of a “charging issue” that caused “a quality issue with the third-party supplied battery cell used in your pin accessory.” charging case”. Humane did not explicitly state whether the unspecified “charging issue” caused an actual fire, but said an investigation found that “certain battery cells supplied by this supplier may pose a fire safety risk.”
While Humane has so far not used the word “recall,” the company recommends people stop using the charging case immediately. Other charging accessories, including the battery booster and charging pad, are apparently safe as their batteries come from different suppliers. We've reached out to Humane for more information and whether they plan to refund or replace the $149 accessory for people who already purchased one. Meanwhile, the company is offering its customers two months of its subscription service for free.
The full text of the email is below.
Out of an abundance of caution, we are reaching out today to ask you to immediately stop using and charging your charging case accessory due to an issue with certain battery cells in the charging case accessory.
Upon receiving a single report of a charging issue when using a third-party USB-C cable and a third-party power supply, we identified a quality issue with the third-party supplied battery cell used in your charging case accessory. burden.
Our investigation determined that the battery supplier was no longer meeting our quality standards and that there is a possibility that certain battery cells supplied by this supplier pose a fire safety risk. As a result, we immediately disqualified this battery supplier while we work to identify a new supplier to avoid such issues and maintain our high quality standards.
The identified issue is limited to only certain battery cells used in the charging case accessory and is not related to the hardware design of the charging case accessory.
Importantly, the Humane ai Pin, its battery booster(s) and its charging pad are not affected as the disqualified supplier does not supply batteries or any other components of those Humane products and are safe for its continued use.
