EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
environment.ec.europa.eu
EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
1–10 of 198 posts
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#2It came up recently in local news. I wonder how they force that for earphones...
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#3If I read this correctly they are concerned about 2 things: harmful substances in batteries and cars with huge batteries that cannot be changed.
Sounds reasonable to me, although I expect the zero-regulation folks to have their usual meltdown about this.
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#4It came up recently in local news. I wonder how they force that for earphones...
I am not sure if thst is really a problem. Batteries of hearing aids have been replaceable for a while now.
There appears to be a few reason to become excempt from the rules, e.g. medical reasons (if it is in your body safety is more crucial than removability of the battery). So who knows what Apples lawyers will do with this.
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#5As someone who does electronic repairs I welcome this. There are too many devices where the battery is the first point of failure and it is glued in. The number of batteries I could only remove with hot air and heat due to the battery being glued in is too damn high.
Heat for removal works but is always like defusing a inextinguishable bomb and takes much more time than it should. I also have rarely seen a design where the glue was really necessary for the design. Basically they could just have put the battery in without glue and it would have worked just as fine.
Maybe companies really need that kind of regulation to so the common sense right thing.
There are excemptions in cases where it is really technically needed as far as I can tell (medical, water-tightness for safety reasons, data integrity needed so battery can't be removed). I hope they are not too lax with those.
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#6[flagged]
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#7Lets see how long it takes this time until someone shows up and calls the EU a nanny state.
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#8It’s not clear to me from this, but I hope that the “removability” component of this means the end of “disposable” vapes with a fixed lithium battery installed. I can’t even count the number of these I’ve seen littering the roadside. Ideally this raises the cost of that business model enough to also eliminate some vendors from that product category (“disposable” vapes), which is primarily aimed at/used by children anyway.
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#9The replaceable battery yes.. but the buried lede imo is the material recovery targets. EU imports basically 100% of its lithium and cobalt (https://rmis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/rmp/Lithium). Mandating high recycling rates for exactly those materials is industrial policy in an environmental costume. Same pattern as their payments regulation (https://philippdubach.com/posts/europes-24-trillion-payment-...), frame sovereignty as consumer protection and nobody fights you on it. Clever, honestly.
Re: EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
#10I have been maintaining this chart of phones with replaceable batteries available in the USA for 10 years now:
https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/removable_battery
Man, is it empty these days. The chart used to be pretty full. Now it only has about 1% of all phones that are in the Product Chart database. As the other 99% have fixed batteries.
I'm looking forward to see if the EU decision will push some companies to do this for their US versions too and revive the chart.