Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

At the end of October 2022, the European Council approved the new regulations of the European Parliament on general chargers and required that by the end of 2024, the Type-C interface would become a mandatory requirement for electronic devices such as mobile phones, tablets and headphones in the European Union. It was this rule that led Apple to change the Lightning interface for thousands of years on the iPhone 15 series.

Figure Source: from the Internet, on November 1, 2022, a "Digital Market Law" formulated by the European Union aimed at regulating the operation of large Internet companies officially entered into force, in order to prevent some goalkeepers who are both judges and players from taking advantage of their dominant positions in data sharing, software installation, platform selection, advertising promotion and so on to obtain high monopoly profits or restrict market competition.

In this round, Apple once again lay down the gun. Earlier, Bloomberg reported that Apple was already having engineers prepare a new project to make major changes to its App Store strategy on iPhone.

Source: recently, the Council of Europe passed another bill from the Internet, which is the long-standing EU Battery and waste Battery Regulation (hereinafter referred to as the "New Battery Act"). The "New Battery Act" puts forward new instructions for portable electronic devices (products of sealed quality less than or equal to 5kg and not designed to specialize in industrial use). It is required that the batteries of portable electronic devices should be designed with detachable batteries.

Next, let's talk about what the "new battery law" says and what impact it will have on the mobile phone industry in two parts.

What exactly does the "new battery law" say? From the actual results, the birth of the "new battery law" can be said to be the focus of public attention, and even the result of public expectation. On the day of the vote, the European Parliament adopted the battery management regulations by a high vote of 587 in favor, 9 against and 20 abstentions.

The European Union has always been one of the promoters of green and low-carbon development, and even launched the Battery Guide, a guiding document for batteries, as early as 2006, and the European Commission established the European Battery Union in 2017. then, in 2020, the European Union put forward a proposal for a "new battery law". After sewing and mending, it is the "new battery law" that we now see.

Therefore, the EU's focus on batteries really did not come to mind in the past two years.

However, contrary to what everyone thinks, the "new battery law" will regulate the life cycle of all batteries sold in the European Union, from minerals and materials upstream to production, recycling and reuse. It involves portable batteries, industrial batteries, electric vehicle power batteries and two-wheeled electric vehicle batteries.

In this "new battery law", the management direction is roughly divided into two parts, one is power battery, the other is portable battery. The power battery includes industrial battery whose quality exceeds 5kg, EV battery, LMT battery and SLI battery, while portable battery refers to sealed battery whose mass is less than or equal to 5kg and is not designed for industrial use.

Source: EU Battery and waste Battery regulations in terms of regulatory content:

First, the EU's "New Battery Law" pays more attention to the collection of waste batteries and the recycling of battery materials.

The "new battery law" requires manufacturers to have certain recycling targets, such as power batteries requiring a recovery rate of 51% in 2028 and 61% in 2031. The recovery rate of portable batteries will reach 45% in 2023, 63% in 2027 and 73% in 2030.

Second, the manufacturer should provide the battery carbon footprint statement and label, as well as the battery passport.

The New Battery Act requires rechargeable industrial and power batteries with a capacity greater than 2kWh to provide carbon footprint statements and labels, and companies to collect and calculate carbon emission data for each life cycle, including upstream raw materials, product production, transportation, scrapping and recycling. In addition, the New Battery Act also requires that power batteries must have a battery passport (recording new information such as battery capacity, performance, use, chemical composition, recyclable materials, etc.) in 2026 before they can be sold in Europe.

Electronic passport of LG battery loaded by Tesla

Third, all portable batteries should be designed with removable batteries.

Under the New Battery Act, all portable batteries are required to be designed with removable batteries from 2027, so that consumers can turn on the device and remove and replace the battery without special tools or training.

Photo Source: EU official website press release in these three types of regulations, compared with the industry-oriented power battery carbon emissions and recycling, the most relevant to consumers must be the removable design of portable batteries. Then a question arises: battery removable is a technology that was eliminated by mobile phone manufacturers in the early years. With the introduction of the "New Battery Law", will the mobile phone market go back more than a decade to the era of battery dismantling in the early years?

Don't worry, listen to me slowly.

Will mobile phones really need to return to "universal charging" in the future? As early as the end of last year and the beginning of this year, before the EU's "new battery law" was fully voted on, many media reported this incident, but from the content point of view, the public opinion on this matter is a bit out of line.

First of all, it is true that consumers do not like integrated batteries.

With the development of mobile phone technology in the past two years, in order to achieve better waterproof and more sophisticated internal design of the body, mobile phone manufacturers have adopted integrated battery design. However, the drawback caused by this is that the replenishment is too slow, and it takes a long time to charge before the phone can return to full power again, which is also the main reason for increasing the charging power of the phone. If this problem is designed with a detachable battery, you can get the phone back to full power in less than a minute.

In addition, all major mobile phone manufacturers adopt private charging agreements, which also increases consumers' charging costs in disguise, and it can be regarded as "widely expected" if the phone becomes a detachable battery.

But EU rules are not what consumers think.

In other media reports, it is said that mobile phones will adopt the design of detachable batteries in the future, returning to the era of "universal charging". According to the EU's "New Battery Law", the "removable battery" of the new regulation does not refer to the era of "universal charging", but more refers to the fact that the battery can be removed through common tools, such as screwdrivers, warps and other daily tools. Tools such as the current need for electric soldering iron, hot air gun, sol, etc., are not allowed.

Therefore, if based on these instructions, the future mobile phone may be more to add disassembly ability, rather than random disassembly ability, there is a big difference between the two. In addition, this regulation is likely to lead to negative problems such as loss of waterproofing and increase in thickness of mobile phones.

Therefore, this is the first thing we need to make clear, that is, the return of "universal charging" is impossible.

Secondly, according to foreign media reports, there are also two "exemption clauses" in the EU's "New Battery Law".

First, if the phone uses a high-quality battery: it can still provide 83% of the original capacity after 1000 charging cycles, or 80% of the original capacity after 1000 charging cycles, the phone can continue to use a closed design.

Second, if the phone is waterproof or reaches a certain level of waterproofing, including straight boards and folding screen phones, the phone can still use a closed design.

Figure source: Samsung official website on the first, as early as two years ago, Xiaomi through the current algorithm and thickened graphite slices, can achieve 800 cycles of battery capacity of more than 80%, 2022 OPPO Find X5 can also achieve 1600 cycles of charge and discharge remaining effective capacity of 80%.

In addition, the long-life battery carried by the previous Glory X50 can remain more than 80% healthy after 1000 charges and discharges. The regulation will come into effect in 2027, which may not be a big problem for mobile phone manufacturers as the technology iterates.

Photo Source: Glory official website as for waterproof, although not all folding screen phones are supported by waterproof, Samsung and Huawei have released folding screen phones with waterproof performance, and most flagship straight-board phones support waterproof features.

Therefore, based on these two exemption clauses, there is not much room for domestic mobile phones to be exported to Europe. Compared with the flagship market, the test may be more in the middle and lower end of the market. Therefore, the emergence of the "new battery law" will not change the status quo of mobile phones. At best, it will force mobile phone manufacturers to do more work on battery performance and waterproof certification.

As a matter of fact, these regulations recently introduced by the European Union are all positive from the point of view of consumers. From my personal point of view, I support the introduction of more laws and regulations by the European Union. Domestic mobile phone manufacturers have formed a certain pattern after years of development, and there is a lack of new supervision to change this market. avoid some of the problems that consumers will face when using products. The EU's "new battery law" gives us a good example, which can effectively avoid the battery performance of middle and low-end products, and also enable manufacturers to make breakthroughs in folding screen waterproofing and battery performance.

As for the future, let's wait and see.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: non-objective Laboratory (ID:zhinan617).

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