Overheating risk forces Garmin to recall 1.25 million Nuvi devices

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 26 2010, 07:12

GPS specialist Garmin is recalling a whopping 1.25 million units of its Nuvi personal navigation device (PND) following safety concerns connected to potentially overheating internal batteries.

According to Kansas-based Garmin, the leading PND manufacturer in the United States, the Nuvi battery packs are supplied by an unnamed third-party company, which has agreed to help shoulder costs related to replacing the recalled energy cells.

All of the recalled Nuvi devices carry the same defined date code range and also a specific printed circuit board design, which “in rare circumstances, increase the possibility of overheating, which may lead to a fire hazard,” the company revealed on Wednesday.

Defective devices covered by the recall include Nuvi units with model numbers 200W, 250W, 260W, 7xx, and 7xxT (note: the ‘xx’ element of the preceding models is denoted by a two-digit number).

Garmin has launched a special recall web page where Nuvi owners can input the model number from their device and check to see if it’s affected.

Clearly keen to prevent investors from falling into a state of panic, Garmin has said the product recall is not expected to negatively impact its quarterly results.

“I don’t think it means much,” commented Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner in a Reuters report. “Product recalls in the consumer electronic space are not unusual and recalls involving battery issues are fairly common.”

In terms of exercising its better-safe-than-sorry approach to the problem, Garmin has said around 796,000 of the affected Nuvi units were sold to consumers in the United States.

It also insists that less than 10 cases of actual overheating have been reported, and none of those instances resulted in customers sustaining physical injury.

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