EU USB-C Mandate

The EU standard recently changed from micro usb to usb type C. The only other charging cable in the EU market is Apple’s lightning. Forcing Apple to go to USB wouldn’t cause major damage.

The EU consulted with phone producers before standardizing on micro-USB, then again before standardizing on USB-C, and it will do again when something better comes up.They have explicitly called out not regulating wireless charging for this reason.Yours is a valid concern, but it's not grounded in reality.

In general USB chargers work with Apple devices. You just need another cable. Cables are small, fragile (so do not last anyway) and have minimal impact on transport or waste production.While legislation can be changed, it takes time and influence to do so. What manufacturer would introduce a new charger unless they are sure the EU would allow it? It essentially means it will only change if a big manufacturer lobbies for it BEFORE launching products, or if a standard gets established in the re

EU legislation previously mandated micro USB on phones. That didn't seem to kill innovation, we still got USB-C. The only thing it killed was every manufacturer using a different bad connector. I don't see any downsides.

EU basically said to manufacturers: Find a common ground for charging cables / chargers, otherwise we will simply regulate it. So all manufacturers apart from Apple agreed to use microUSB (at the time). Apple was still part of this, but decided to simply provide an adapter to microUSB.

I wonder if the EU is going to amend the USB-C charger requirement to address this.

Interoperability undoubtedly has advantages in the long run. But there's a delicate balance to be struck at what point in product evolution to standardize. I'm fine with standardizing on USB-C (even though the cable situation is a mess). But IMHO USB micro would have been inferior to lightning, and forcing Apple to standardize on that would have set back the industry. And imagine laptops if the EU had decided to solve the conference room projector problem by mandating VGA ports in ever

The same thing existed for micro USB before but Apple could not agree to that or a new standard, so the EU said "USB-C". The law provides for upgrades and mandates compliance with the spec, including PD. If the spec upgrades, the law does so automatically.This is a good thing.

If your connector really is better, so much as to obsolete USB-C, then you may be able to get the authorities to make your connector the new standard. So there is still incentive, and an incentive to make something that is genuinely better, not just for vendor lock-in.Also to keep in mind that this regulation is a consequence of how the market developed in the last 20 years. The EU gave the industry a chance to sort out the situation before regulation, to which it mostly did with USB-C

Closed "standards" are bad, but in this case even if it were an open standard the industry was forced to chose one of them so every device can use same cables and peripherals. It is not EU fault that the industry except Apple chose USB and is not EU fault that Apple decided to use USB in US.