The most notable proposed fix (listed in Annex II) is for phone makers and sellers to make “professional repairers” available for five years after the date a phone is removed from the market. Those repairers would have access to parts including the battery, display, cameras, charging ports, mechanical buttons, microphones, speakers, and hinge assemblies (including for folding phones and tablets).
Phone companies also get a choice: either make replacement batteries and back-covers available to phone owners or design batteries that meet minimum standards. Those include still having 83 percent of its rated capacity after 500 full charging cycles, then 80 percent after 1,000 full charging cycles. Apple, for example, currently claims that its iPhones are designed to retain 80 percent capacity after 500 charge cycles.
Good. I’ve been saying it for years: if the automotive industry can be legally obligated to provide spare parts, repair information, and more to third parties, so can the technology industry.
If only, EU would regulate laptops as well. Soldered RAM and SSD is just deplorable.
There are cases where soldered RAM makes sense (phones), but not the laptops. Even on non “ultra portable” ones, Lenovo has pretty much given full soldered route. And I will call them out at every opportunity.
RAM and SSD fails much earlier than motherboards or CPUs. Having them soldered is equal to much more frequent system replacements instead of repairs. (Conspiracy theory: could this be the reason in the first place)?
But soldered DDR frees up a ton of PCB area, which in turn leads to bigger batteries or smaller form factors. Which is what most consumers actually want.
javiercero1,
I agree with sukru here, especially for medium & large laptops. DIMMs don’t take up much space and provide a nice upgrade path. I think the bigger incentive for manufacturers to omit them is to cut component costs.
Alfman,
Agreed. Our new Lenovo switched from a replaceable SO-DIMM to a soldered one. It has more or less the same chassis profile as the old one, and yes, there is plenty of room to add the slot.
Again, except for ultra-portables where every bit of space is important, regular laptops (and desktops: looking at you Apple), don’t need soldered RAM or SSD.
Well, automotive companies not named Tesla anyways…
Bill Shooter of Bul
No kidding, there are many reports of authorized tesla shops insisting owners buy whole new battery packs at $20+k instead of repairing them, even when it’s just a couple cells that are bad or just a trivial part.
https://fighttorepair.substack.com/p/teslas-a-vocal-opponent-of-the-right
https://nypost.com/2021/12/24/tesla-explodes-after-mechanics-charge-man-23k-for-new-battery/
https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacement-repair/
Not only are the repair bills outrageous outside of warranty, but it’s so wasteful having to replace the whole $22k battery pack, most of which still works fine, instead of repairing what’s actually broken.
I’ll give tesla credit for encouraging people to go electric, but the truth is that the math behind batteries being less environmentally destructive than gas emissions assumes that the battery packs have a full life and aren’t disposed of prematurely. Telsa’s shop policies are likely in place to maximize profits, but they are incompatible with the mission of reducing carbon emissions and promoting ecologically sound manufacturing.
Then there are horror stories about tesla using OTA updates to remove capacity. Whenever a company runs out of old stock, they’ll typically honor warranties with upgrades if necessary. This isn’t unusual, but to then retroactively disable it OTA after it’s been sold to a new owner seems vindictive as hell. Now they’re going to have to drive around with a battery that’s physically heavier without the benefit of a full charge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87poTGAasbE
Ugh, I see very little benefit to cars with OTA updates, the risk of vendor locking is very high and I fear it’s mostly a ploy to push microtransactions on car owners 🙁
Everything wrong with John Deer, coming to your car soon.
Alfman,
I get what you say about unnecessary obsoletion.
Even including battery manufacturing, and even if electricity were generated from “dirty” sources, EVs would “pay” their carbon debt in less than 3 years compared to conventional vehicles: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change/
So 6 years is “pure profit” in terms of environment.
However we can always do better. Lithium batteries themselves are very recyclable. And artificial limitations don’t make sense. There is already a aftermarket for Nissan Leaf batteries, including extending their range. But Tesla, despite all their other benefits, are bad for “ownership”.
sukru,
3 years seems overly optimistic to me, especially with the larger long range batteries that more people will want as opposed to short range ones. Obviously the carbon emissions are strongly affected by local factors. If utilities are using very dirty coal, then it’s harder to make the case for EV IMHO.
This link reflects what I was trying to say about just how important battery lifetime is in calculating the benefits of EV.
https://www.powerelectronicsnews.com/the-little-secret-of-electric-vehicles/
We should be doing everything possible, but money is finite and they say it might make sense to consider spending it where it does the greatest good, which isn’t necessarily EVs. The lifetime of the battery directly affects the calculation of whether EVs are competative with other decarbonization efforts.
Obviously when consumers are being coerced into replacing their batteries before the end of life figures being used to calculate carbon emissions, then not only is it bad on their wallets, but it also represents opportunity costs for the carbon emissions they intended to cut back on too.
From the article (my emphasis)…
I agree with this. Consumers should be entitled to the diagnostic information on their own vehicles. And manufacturers that withhold it in order to upsell costly replacements should be penalized because it’s not just about money, it’s about our environment. We have to do something to curb the wasteful practices done in the name of profits. Unfortunately many industries have gotten used to making disposable products aren’t designed to have long lifetimes, this needs to stop and get reversed!
Alfman,
“money is finite”…
ah….
I think we might have a fundamental disagreement here.
I would believe everything is practically infinite, it just has a dynamic cost based on how much we are willing to pay for it (in terms of effort, energy, and other resources).
Anyway,
This topic has enough potential to go on forever 🙂
sukru,
I’ll give you that on a technicality, our fiat currency is “infinite”, haha. But I’d still say the “finite” nature of resources here on earth is reality at least until we can become a type 1 or type 2 civilization.
https://doseofknowledge.substack.com/p/the-different-levels-of-civilizations
Until then though we do have to contend with limited effort & resources having different payouts for different strategies. Maximizing benefit per given effort & resources hinges on picking an optimal strategy. While a less optimal strategy can still provide benefit, it will do so less efficiently.
No doubt it will. I think it has been hard for some people to accept any personal sacrifices, they want it to be someone else’s problem. They want to open their wallets and pay vendors that make them feel good even when they continue to live wastefully and ignoring the detrimental impacts to our future.
We must completely reconsider consumerism and “disposable” products with short lifecycles and curtail the business models that promote this. Alas it is going to be extremely expensive for both consumers and companies to change. New product sales have to drop, which is the whole point but is the exact opposite of what capitalists are motivated to do by nature. It sometimes feels doubtful that we will put environment and social needs over corporate profits, and this leaves us on a course with more human suffering in the future 🙁
I hope they also require vendors to provide 5 years of software updates, to avoid having repairable hardware but dysfunctional software.
sirf,
I agree, While it’s a huge problem that for-profit chip makers don’t want to keep supporting old devices, what really stings is that they hold all the support assets. Honestly I’d strongly prefer they handed off support to the FOSS community so that once they inevitably abandon support, it doesn’t matter because we’re not locked exclusively into them providing it.
I know it’s not realistic, but I’d like to see regulation and even software copyrights become far more proactive in protecting the public interests with regards to neglected & abandoned software.