The HALO Bolt ACDC 58830 is a made-in-China portable charger that can jump-start a vehicle or top up electronics, and the units covered by a Consumer Product Safety Commission warning carry manufacture year codes 16, 17, 18 or 19. That window means December 2019 or earlier. The commission issued the notice on November 14, 2025, as warning number 26-087, because the importer declined to run a recall.
The agency’s own headline for the warning cites a risk of serious injury or death from fire and burns. Behind it sit multiple reports of chargers catching fire, one report of burn injuries and several reports of property damage. A recall is the normal remedy for a product like that; a warning is what remains when the company that brought it into the country will not agree to one.
Year Codes, Retailers and the $120 Price
According to the CPSC warning, the charger sold in a variety of colors at Best Buy and other retail stores nationwide, and online at QVC.com, Amazon.com and BestBuy.com. The price was about $120 before discounts. The product is a combination device, with a battery large enough to start an engine and ports to charge a phone, and the commission directs its warning at the models built in December 2019 or earlier.
The notice pairs a plain instruction with that scope. CPSC tells owners to stop using the chargers immediately.
A Recall Handbook Written for Cooperative Companies
The commission’s published Recall Handbook is a guide for manufacturers, importers, distributors and retailers, and it centers on how a firm reports a hazard under Section 15 of the Consumer Product Safety Act and then carries out a voluntary recall, including the Fast Track program for firms that move quickly. The handbook describes a process that runs on cooperation, and it does not address what follows a refusal. In practice the process depends on the importer picking up the phone, agreeing on a remedy and paying for it.
The reporting side is firmer. Under the commission’s duty-to-report guidance, firms must tell CPSC within 24 hours when they obtain information that a product could create a substantial risk of injury, creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death, or fails to meet an applicable safety rule, and failing to report fully and immediately can lead to civil or criminal penalties. Reporting a hazard and agreeing to recall the product are separate obligations, which is how a case can reach the public as a warning.
When the importer in this case refused, those steps never happened. The warning therefore carries no refund, repair or replacement offer, only disposal instructions, and it is addressed directly to people who may still own one of the chargers rather than to a retailer’s customer list.
Charging Fires in CPSC’s Own Counts
The agency tracks lithium-ion battery fires in related products, and the figures show why a charging device draws scrutiny. Its micromobility report for 2017 through 2024 counts 45 deaths across 29 separate lithium-ion battery fire incidents involving e-scooters, self-balancing scooters and e-bikes. Among e-bike fires, the most common scenario was a fire that started while the bike was charging.
The same report shows how often investigators land on fire as the problem. Fire was the hazard in 106 of 145 investigated e-bike incidents, or 73 percent, and in 173 of 197 investigated self-balancing scooter incidents, or 88 percent. Those are different products from a portable jump-starter, so the numbers describe the wider lithium-ion landscape the HALO warning sits in, and they are not a count of HALO incidents.
Household Hazardous Waste, Not the Bin
CPSC’s warning says to dispose of the chargers under state and local rules and to take them to a municipal household hazardous waste collection center, never to regular trash or recycling. The Environmental Protection Agency gives the reason: a lithium-ion battery or device thrown in the trash or the recycling bin “may become damaged or crushed in transport or from processing and sorting equipment, creating a fire hazard.” EPA also suggests taping battery terminals or placing batteries in separate plastic bags before drop-off. The agency points residents to the Earth911 and Call2Recycle locators to find a collection point, and its guidance states flatly that lithium-ion batteries and the devices containing them belong at separate recycling or household hazardous waste sites. A charger that can no longer be used for its original purpose still holds the cell, which is the part that burns.
Anyone who has had one of these chargers overheat or ignite can file a report at SaferProducts.gov, where CPSC investigators review each submission.
The warning’s own tally is small, one burn injury and several property-damage reports, and the commission published it anyway with no recall to attach it to. That choice makes the importer’s refusal the central fact on the record for the HALO Bolt ACDC 58830.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
More from Morning Overview
- Older Teslas are wearing out in ways early owners never saw coming
- Early electric-car owners are hitting battery and screen failures no one warned them about
- A magnitude 5.3 quake struck off the Oregon coast this week
- Amazon’s Prime refunds are rising to $200 as millions more customers become eligible
