It had been in the works for a while, but now it has formally been adopted. From the article:
The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user, leaving sufficient time for operators to adapt the design of their products to this requirement.
What I’m hoping for is more investment into supercapacitors now. Charges very quickly, and most don’t have any kind of degradation. Biggest issue is that they don’t hold nearly as much power as current Lithium systems, but there have been research papers mentioning ways to get around this. There’s also a few other minor things, but they would solve the need to replace batteries over time.
Of course, one of the main reasons there may have been little research for supercaps is cause of planned obscelescence…