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Cool. The EU does have its [many!] faults. But they have a pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights and consumer choice. Next up I'd like to se

Cool. The EU does have its [many!] faults. But they have a pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights and consumer choice. Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora of incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB connector.

origin_path 4y ago
"consumer choice ... insisting all mobile phones standardise" Although it's not the most important thing in the world, forcing standardization through law is the opposite of giving consumers choices.
- Normille 4y ago
  That's a bit of a disingenuous comment though. I'd make a distinction between forcing standardisation on something like a power supply connector and forcing standardisation of actual products themselves. Standardisation of the former means we don't have to have half a dozen sockets on the wall because every domestic appliance manufacturer uses a different design plug... or have each of those sockets provide a different voltage because every appliance manufacturer opted for a different voltage. Standardisation of the latter leads to waiting 15 years for your Trabant.
- jlokier 4y ago
  I don't think it qualifies as an "opposite", because enforced standards also create consumer choice sometimes. Case in point: The enforced standardising of mobile phone chargers has given consumers more choice of chargers to use with their phone. Thas proven quite useful in practice, e.g. when they leave the one that came with their device at home because they didn't expect to need it, or when the manufacturer's own brand is more expensive than an alternative, or if they have an old phone. I remember before USB-C standardised phone power, when visiting someone the chance that they had a power supply you could use was very low, because each one used a different connector. Even different models from the same brand. If you went travelling at short notice, you might have to buy a second charger just to keep you going for a few days. That's no longer required. Over the years you would end up with a box full of incompatible chargers, all e-waste. I think I have about 10. This particular consumer benefit didn't happen voluntarily among manufacturers (unlike, say, SIM cards), so forcing it has increased consumer choice in some useful respects. I prefer Apple's lightning connector (even though I don't have an iPhone), and other connectors better than USB-C would surely emerge if allowed to, so I do see benefits in not enforcing a standard like that too strictly. But the situation before USB-C mobile power was less consumer choice not more, for consumers of almost every phone.
- largepeepee 4y ago
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  You lose choice of plug, which almost nobody wanted. You gain choice of charger to use with your phone, which most people do want, especially when outside their home.
tmoravec 4y ago
> pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights Are you sure EU has "pretty good track record" with these fines of Google, FB, et al.? If anything, I'd say the EU puts a mild theatre every now and then, and gives the US giants a free pass otherwise.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  What really matters is how many dollars did they take from european citizens and businesses, and how many tax and fine dollars did they return. Europe needs to make sure these tech giants get to keep just enough money that they don't pull out of europe entirely, but not much more. Big fines are a start, but a better approach is taxation, since that takes away the regulatory risk for the companies.
  - oblak 4y ago
    Huh? The EU tech sector would absolutely love the US giants pulling out (phrasing) of Europe. Who wants to fight all these behemoths that pay almost no taxes here because they "invest" so much
    - dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
      Let's imagine for a second that someone really wanted FB out of Europe. FB would fight tooth and nail to stay - because losing the European market would be a huge blow to them. Practically every European business at least tried using FB ads, some have permanent campaigns. There is no way FB would ever leave Europe. They will fight, they will pay, they will protest, but the chances of them leaving are exactly zero.
  - tmoravec 4y ago
    > Big fines are a start, but a better approach is taxation, since that takes away the regulatory risk for the companies. Companies should obey the laws first and foremost. I'm not sure there's a lot of regulatory risk either; Google certainly has enough lawyers to know that what they did was illegal.
londons_explore 4y ago
The cordless power tools typically have the battery management system in the device, not in the battery. The battery tends to contain protection circuitry, but no logic that determines charge rate etc. That means every device manufacturer will claim, even if the law requires that devices must all have the same plug, that a competitors device drew too much current, or charged their battery too fast/too slow/at too a low a temperature, and thats why performance sucks. In reality, these technical problems could be solved - but device manufacturers will make the small hurdle into a big one when explaining why they can't all standardize.
- beAbU 4y ago
  I'm not sure that I agree with this statement. Many of the packs that I've seen the inside of has balancing circuitry included. Also worth considering these packs are charged separate from the tool. So this means the tool cannot control the charge rate etc. Lastly, based on my luddite eyes, the difference between makita, milwaukee, bosch, dewalt and ryobi batteries seem to me to only be a different keying in the plastic mating parts. This suspicion is amplified when you consider that some of these brands are made by the same company.
  - sorry_i_lisp 4y ago
    +1 that the plastic is the main difference are the "everything to Ryobi"-plastic adadpters you can buy. I use Makita battery->Ryobi tool and it works great.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      Ryobi are actually the first batteries that I genuinely dislike; I have 8 year old Black & Decker drill whose battery still works great. Similar experience with some other manufacturers. But we went all-in on Ryobi at Home Depot a few years ago, and we now have to buy 2-4 new batteries a year. Then after 12-18 months, the battery shows as defective on its charger.... brutal. (probably less-than-average usage patterns as we are lazy house owners; stored inside, not abused)
fatboy 4y ago
I think that's a bit trickier. If Makita or whoever was forced to change their batteries, anyone with a big catalogue of their tools would be pretty miffed. Also, I've mentioned this on hn before, there is already the Cordless Alliance, which does exactly this. Sadly, there's only a couple of useful-in-a-mainstream-sense brands in there: Mafell and Metabo. The rest are very niche.
- namdnay 4y ago
  I would be wary of this "cordless alliance", the dynamics are closer to that of a kingdom than an alliance... it's basically lots of small(er) german tool manufacturers using Metabo batteries instead of developing their own. Which is great, but not really the same thing as an alliance of equals agreeing to align existing systems
  - fatboy 4y ago
    That's not really so surprising though. Any brand that already has a system would be penalising existing customers by changing, we're not talking usb cables here. Good on Metabo for doing it, and good on Mafell for signing up to use them. The smaller brands it's a no-brainer I guess.
- 6510 4y ago
  I just sold some tools for 5 euro each. They need new batteries but company is gone. Makita can just continue to sell their old batteries while their new tools use a standardized form factor. They could also make an old type battery with replaceable cells.
  - fatboy 4y ago
    I have five or six Makita 18v batteries and a load of their tools. If they only make new tools with the new battery they are potentially making me quite miffed. If I want the new tool I need also the new batteries and charger. Also I'd need multiple batteries because you can't really only have one. Personally I'd be happy for that situation because of the big upside, but I can see why a company would not want it. Plus, the most logical thing to do is not make a new standard, but pick an existing one. But who gets to be the golden brand whose battery system remains unchanged? I would love it to happen but I can't see it happening for a while.
woeh 4y ago
I was pleased to see recently that a couple of different brands at my local DIY store had interoperable batteries. I bought a small lawnmower which now uses the same battery as a cordless drill from another brand. The brands that joined are listed on their marketing site[0]. Edit: One of the companies has a slightly less obnoxious website which also lists brands[1] [0]https://www.powerforall-alliance.com/en/#technology https://www.powerforall-alliance.com/en/#technology [1]https://www.gardena.com/int/products/powerforall/ https://www.gardena.com/int/products/powerforall/
- Kerbonut 4y ago
  I’m glad we’re finally working towards standard batteries for power tools. I have to say that website is terrible.
  - pmx 4y ago
    It plays absolute havoc with the browser history, how did they think that was a good idea?
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Oh cool, so there are two competing battery pack standards :D https://www.cordless-alliance-system.com https://www.cordless-alliance-system.com
  - mdiesel 4y ago
    Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    This is why the EU is right we have to regulate these things. There just aren’t right answers here, each battery has pros and cons, so it’s a political matter full stop.
  - bmicraft 4y ago
    I've never even heard of a power tool from any of those companies
scarface74 4y ago
The EU insisting on all phones standardizing on the USB connector is evidence of just the opposite and shows the cluelessness and shortsightness of the EU. You will still have phones that come with “standard USB C” cables where some support different power delivery, data speeds (or not support data transfer at all), very few will support video over USB C (which is standardized), etc. So still when the Android user with the cheap power only USB C cord moves over to the hypothetical iPhone 15 with USB C, they will still have to throw away their USB C cable that potentially doesn’t support high speed data or video over USB C. Both supported by todays iPads with USB C. If the same mandate had gone through when it was first proposed, we would have been stuck with micro USB.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >So still when the Android user with the cheap power only USB C cord moves over to the hypothetical iPhone 15 with USB C, they will still have to throw away their USB C cable that potentially doesn’t support high speed data or video over USB C. Except that it's still a perfectly fine cable for charging, which is what most people do with their cables?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    As long as you don’t care about data transfers of the very large video and photos that modern phones can create or connecting to a larger screen. If you want to “avoid ewaste” why not “mandate” more than the least common denominator? If iPhone users were satisfied with the least common denominator, they would be buying cheap Android phones.
    - Auracle 4y ago
      The amount of people that transfer videos/photos off of their phone to a computer by any means is absolutely minuscule.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        So you think the people shooting 4K video and taking RAW pictures are posting them to Instagram? The lowest common denominator is the same reason that Bluetooth outside of the Apple ecosystem is such a shit show. Android has supported its own proprietary video over micro USB for ages before USB C became more ubiquitous. What are the chances that Android manufactures won’t cheap out and not ship with cables that can support video over USB?
suction 4y ago
elsonrodriguez 4y ago
If the EU standardizes on battery packs, Ryobi needs go get a free pass or extension of some sort. Ryobi have kept the same battery format for 25 years, whereas their competitors have changed battery standards 2 or 3 times during that timeframe.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Ryobi and Milwaukee are owned by the same company, and Ryobi products have not changed because they are the low-end product made by that company. The parent company uses the newer battery formats in their more expensive brands. Ryobi should not be praised for failure to innovate. They did not do this out of a desire to preserve compatibility, but rather out of cheapness.
  - elsonrodriguez 4y ago
    They have switched from NiCad to lithium ion. When new cell chemistries became available they made a lithium+ line. They now have higher amperage batteries with more contacts for their "HP" line of tools. Those batteries and tools are still backwards compatible. I can take an HP battery I bought for my impact wrench and throw it into my 20 year old recip saw I bought at a garage sale and it works. Ryobi products are low end but they have innovated plenty while maintaining compatibility. Given that TTI has access to the pro market via other brands, and Ryobi geared for homeowners, I don't see this as anything but a win for the average Ryobi customer.
efsavage 4y ago
I support the charging connector standardization, but not tool batteries. There are so many factors in play I don't see how standardization would offer enough benefit to offset innovation penalties. Even within a given brand/connector, there are variations on capabilities like size and duty cycle and power output. I have a bunch of Milwaukee cordless tools on the M18 platform, and the smaller tools (e.g. drills) can use any battery but some tools (e.g. chainsaw) only work with a subset because of higher power draw. I have cordless tools across a number of battery platforms and while it's convenient when they can be shared, it's ultimately not a big deal to have a few if another company makes a better tool. Tradespeople won't lock themselves in if the right tool is on a different platform.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago
  "Tradespeople won't lock themselves in if the right tool is on a different platform." Right, but home users will. I have 5 Ryobi One+ batteries, so there's no way I'll buy a battery-operated tool from a different brand, even if the tool itself is better/cheaper than the equivalent Ryobi product.
  - Normille 4y ago
    >Right, but home users will. Agreed. I've got about half a dozen Makita cordless tools taking the LXT battery. I'm pretty happy with the brand but I do kind of feel like I'm trapped using whatever Makita offers from now on. The charger cost about £70 and the 3 batteries I have were a similar price, each. So, for me, changing brands for a particular tool would mean an outlay of 'Price of Tool' + 'Price of Charger' + Price of n Batteries' which just isn't worth it, unless the rival company's tool was 2 or 3 times as good as the Makita offering. I've sometimes thought that maybe Metabo, DeWalt or Milwaukee's version of a certain tool I wanted was slightly better than Makita's one. But, as I say, not twice or three times as good, to justify that kind of outlay. So, like quite a few people commenting here, I'm kind of stuck with supporting the blue team now --even when they occasionally get outplayed by their opponents.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Tradesperson. There's a reason Milwaukee, Makita, DeWalt, AEG, and Bosch, are wildly popular. They're almost entirely indistinguishable. We also have some Hilti branded cordless tools, also fine. My personal preference for home use is something like Ryobi One+ or Ozito PXC (less than half the price of the One+) because I'm actually at work all day using power and cordless tools supplied by work, I don't plan on taking my home tools to three or four hundred commercial construction sites or building 1000 houses with them. Tool brand preference is, in my opinion, largely a sport-like
twblalock 4y ago
> Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora of incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB connector. We should all be glad that didn't happen with micro-USB or some of the worse connectors years ago, because we would still be stuck with them. USB-C was innovated by the market, not by EU bureaucrats.
pvarangot 4y ago
rlpb 4y ago
I don't mind so long as third parties are free to make compatible batteries and tools. Unfortunately there's no reasonable migration path for someone already invested in tools and batteries. Unlike phones that get cycled through in just a few years, I am invested in my tools with the expectation that the majority of my less-used tools will last my lifetime. I'd like to be able to buy replacement compatible batteries for at least that long.
jayd16 4y ago
Sadly this decision will lead to more fragmentation, not less, won't it? Would have be nice if there was a path forward for Android standards.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> The EU does have its [many!] faults. Curious/out of the loop: any (unbiased?) examples?

origin_path 4y ago

"consumer choice ... insisting all mobile phones standardise" Although it's not the most important thing in the world, forcing standardization through law is the opposite of giving consumers choices.

Normille 4y ago
That's a bit of a disingenuous comment though. I'd make a distinction between forcing standardisation on something like a power supply connector and forcing standardisation of actual products themselves. Standardisation of the former means we don't have to have half a dozen sockets on the wall because every domestic appliance manufacturer uses a different design plug... or have each of those sockets provide a different voltage because every appliance manufacturer opted for a different voltage. Standardisation of the latter leads to waiting 15 years for your Trabant.
jlokier 4y ago
I don't think it qualifies as an "opposite", because enforced standards also create consumer choice sometimes. Case in point: The enforced standardising of mobile phone chargers has given consumers more choice of chargers to use with their phone. Thas proven quite useful in practice, e.g. when they leave the one that came with their device at home because they didn't expect to need it, or when the manufacturer's own brand is more expensive than an alternative, or if they have an old phone. I remember before USB-C standardised phone power, when visiting someone the chance that they had a power supply you could use was very low, because each one used a different connector. Even different models from the same brand. If you went travelling at short notice, you might have to buy a second charger just to keep you going for a few days. That's no longer required. Over the years you would end up with a box full of incompatible chargers, all e-waste. I think I have about 10. This particular consumer benefit didn't happen voluntarily among manufacturers (unlike, say, SIM cards), so forcing it has increased consumer choice in some useful respects. I prefer Apple's lightning connector (even though I don't have an iPhone), and other connectors better than USB-C would surely emerge if allowed to, so I do see benefits in not enforcing a standard like that too strictly. But the situation before USB-C mobile power was less consumer choice not more, for consumers of almost every phone.
largepeepee 4y ago
Dylan16807 4y ago
You lose choice of plug, which almost nobody wanted. You gain choice of charger to use with your phone, which most people do want, especially when outside their home.

tmoravec 4y ago

> pretty good track record when it comes to consumer rights Are you sure EU has "pretty good track record" with these fines of Google, FB, et al.? If anything, I'd say the EU puts a mild theatre every now and then, and gives the US giants a free pass otherwise.

londons_explore 4y ago
What really matters is how many dollars did they take from european citizens and businesses, and how many tax and fine dollars did they return. Europe needs to make sure these tech giants get to keep just enough money that they don't pull out of europe entirely, but not much more. Big fines are a start, but a better approach is taxation, since that takes away the regulatory risk for the companies.
- oblak 4y ago
  Huh? The EU tech sector would absolutely love the US giants pulling out (phrasing) of Europe. Who wants to fight all these behemoths that pay almost no taxes here because they "invest" so much
  - dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
    Let's imagine for a second that someone really wanted FB out of Europe. FB would fight tooth and nail to stay - because losing the European market would be a huge blow to them. Practically every European business at least tried using FB ads, some have permanent campaigns. There is no way FB would ever leave Europe. They will fight, they will pay, they will protest, but the chances of them leaving are exactly zero.
- tmoravec 4y ago
  > Big fines are a start, but a better approach is taxation, since that takes away the regulatory risk for the companies. Companies should obey the laws first and foremost. I'm not sure there's a lot of regulatory risk either; Google certainly has enough lawyers to know that what they did was illegal.

londons_explore 4y ago

The cordless power tools typically have the battery management system in the device, not in the battery. The battery tends to contain protection circuitry, but no logic that determines charge rate etc. That means every device manufacturer will claim, even if the law requires that devices must all have the same plug, that a competitors device drew too much current, or charged their battery too fast/too slow/at too a low a temperature, and thats why performance sucks. In reality, these technical problems could be solved - but device manufacturers will make the small hurdle into a big one when explaining why they can't all standardize.

beAbU 4y ago
I'm not sure that I agree with this statement. Many of the packs that I've seen the inside of has balancing circuitry included. Also worth considering these packs are charged separate from the tool. So this means the tool cannot control the charge rate etc. Lastly, based on my luddite eyes, the difference between makita, milwaukee, bosch, dewalt and ryobi batteries seem to me to only be a different keying in the plastic mating parts. This suspicion is amplified when you consider that some of these brands are made by the same company.
- sorry_i_lisp 4y ago
  +1 that the plastic is the main difference are the "everything to Ryobi"-plastic adadpters you can buy. I use Makita battery->Ryobi tool and it works great.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Ryobi are actually the first batteries that I genuinely dislike; I have 8 year old Black & Decker drill whose battery still works great. Similar experience with some other manufacturers. But we went all-in on Ryobi at Home Depot a few years ago, and we now have to buy 2-4 new batteries a year. Then after 12-18 months, the battery shows as defective on its charger.... brutal. (probably less-than-average usage patterns as we are lazy house owners; stored inside, not abused)

fatboy 4y ago

I think that's a bit trickier. If Makita or whoever was forced to change their batteries, anyone with a big catalogue of their tools would be pretty miffed. Also, I've mentioned this on hn before, there is already the Cordless Alliance, which does exactly this. Sadly, there's only a couple of useful-in-a-mainstream-sense brands in there: Mafell and Metabo. The rest are very niche.

namdnay 4y ago
I would be wary of this "cordless alliance", the dynamics are closer to that of a kingdom than an alliance... it's basically lots of small(er) german tool manufacturers using Metabo batteries instead of developing their own. Which is great, but not really the same thing as an alliance of equals agreeing to align existing systems
- fatboy 4y ago
  That's not really so surprising though. Any brand that already has a system would be penalising existing customers by changing, we're not talking usb cables here. Good on Metabo for doing it, and good on Mafell for signing up to use them. The smaller brands it's a no-brainer I guess.
6510 4y ago
I just sold some tools for 5 euro each. They need new batteries but company is gone. Makita can just continue to sell their old batteries while their new tools use a standardized form factor. They could also make an old type battery with replaceable cells.
- fatboy 4y ago
  I have five or six Makita 18v batteries and a load of their tools. If they only make new tools with the new battery they are potentially making me quite miffed. If I want the new tool I need also the new batteries and charger. Also I'd need multiple batteries because you can't really only have one. Personally I'd be happy for that situation because of the big upside, but I can see why a company would not want it. Plus, the most logical thing to do is not make a new standard, but pick an existing one. But who gets to be the golden brand whose battery system remains unchanged? I would love it to happen but I can't see it happening for a while.

woeh 4y ago

I was pleased to see recently that a couple of different brands at my local DIY store had interoperable batteries. I bought a small lawnmower which now uses the same battery as a cordless drill from another brand. The brands that joined are listed on their marketing site[0]. Edit: One of the companies has a slightly less obnoxious website which also lists brands[1] [0]https://www.powerforall-alliance.com/en/#technology https://www.powerforall-alliance.com/en/#technology [1]https://www.gardena.com/int/products/powerforall/ https://www.gardena.com/int/products/powerforall/

Kerbonut 4y ago
I’m glad we’re finally working towards standard batteries for power tools. I have to say that website is terrible.
- pmx 4y ago
  It plays absolute havoc with the browser history, how did they think that was a good idea?
Semaphor 4y ago
Oh cool, so there are two competing battery pack standards :D https://www.cordless-alliance-system.com https://www.cordless-alliance-system.com
- mdiesel 4y ago
  Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- edgyquant 4y ago
  This is why the EU is right we have to regulate these things. There just aren’t right answers here, each battery has pros and cons, so it’s a political matter full stop.
- bmicraft 4y ago
  I've never even heard of a power tool from any of those companies

scarface74 4y ago

The EU insisting on all phones standardizing on the USB connector is evidence of just the opposite and shows the cluelessness and shortsightness of the EU. You will still have phones that come with “standard USB C” cables where some support different power delivery, data speeds (or not support data transfer at all), very few will support video over USB C (which is standardized), etc. So still when the Android user with the cheap power only USB C cord moves over to the hypothetical iPhone 15 with USB C, they will still have to throw away their USB C cable that potentially doesn’t support high speed data or video over USB C. Both supported by todays iPads with USB C. If the same mandate had gone through when it was first proposed, we would have been stuck with micro USB.

Hamuko 4y ago
>So still when the Android user with the cheap power only USB C cord moves over to the hypothetical iPhone 15 with USB C, they will still have to throw away their USB C cable that potentially doesn’t support high speed data or video over USB C. Except that it's still a perfectly fine cable for charging, which is what most people do with their cables?
- scarface74 4y ago
  As long as you don’t care about data transfers of the very large video and photos that modern phones can create or connecting to a larger screen. If you want to “avoid ewaste” why not “mandate” more than the least common denominator? If iPhone users were satisfied with the least common denominator, they would be buying cheap Android phones.
  - Auracle 4y ago
    The amount of people that transfer videos/photos off of their phone to a computer by any means is absolutely minuscule.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      So you think the people shooting 4K video and taking RAW pictures are posting them to Instagram? The lowest common denominator is the same reason that Bluetooth outside of the Apple ecosystem is such a shit show. Android has supported its own proprietary video over micro USB for ages before USB C became more ubiquitous. What are the chances that Android manufactures won’t cheap out and not ship with cables that can support video over USB?

suction 4y ago

elsonrodriguez 4y ago

If the EU standardizes on battery packs, Ryobi needs go get a free pass or extension of some sort. Ryobi have kept the same battery format for 25 years, whereas their competitors have changed battery standards 2 or 3 times during that timeframe.

twblalock 4y ago
Ryobi and Milwaukee are owned by the same company, and Ryobi products have not changed because they are the low-end product made by that company. The parent company uses the newer battery formats in their more expensive brands. Ryobi should not be praised for failure to innovate. They did not do this out of a desire to preserve compatibility, but rather out of cheapness.
- elsonrodriguez 4y ago
  They have switched from NiCad to lithium ion. When new cell chemistries became available they made a lithium+ line. They now have higher amperage batteries with more contacts for their "HP" line of tools. Those batteries and tools are still backwards compatible. I can take an HP battery I bought for my impact wrench and throw it into my 20 year old recip saw I bought at a garage sale and it works. Ryobi products are low end but they have innovated plenty while maintaining compatibility. Given that TTI has access to the pro market via other brands, and Ryobi geared for homeowners, I don't see this as anything but a win for the average Ryobi customer.

efsavage 4y ago

I support the charging connector standardization, but not tool batteries. There are so many factors in play I don't see how standardization would offer enough benefit to offset innovation penalties. Even within a given brand/connector, there are variations on capabilities like size and duty cycle and power output. I have a bunch of Milwaukee cordless tools on the M18 platform, and the smaller tools (e.g. drills) can use any battery but some tools (e.g. chainsaw) only work with a subset because of higher power draw. I have cordless tools across a number of battery platforms and while it's convenient when they can be shared, it's ultimately not a big deal to have a few if another company makes a better tool. Tradespeople won't lock themselves in if the right tool is on a different platform.

rahimnathwani 4y ago
"Tradespeople won't lock themselves in if the right tool is on a different platform." Right, but home users will. I have 5 Ryobi One+ batteries, so there's no way I'll buy a battery-operated tool from a different brand, even if the tool itself is better/cheaper than the equivalent Ryobi product.
- Normille 4y ago
  >Right, but home users will. Agreed. I've got about half a dozen Makita cordless tools taking the LXT battery. I'm pretty happy with the brand but I do kind of feel like I'm trapped using whatever Makita offers from now on. The charger cost about £70 and the 3 batteries I have were a similar price, each. So, for me, changing brands for a particular tool would mean an outlay of 'Price of Tool' + 'Price of Charger' + Price of n Batteries' which just isn't worth it, unless the rival company's tool was 2 or 3 times as good as the Makita offering. I've sometimes thought that maybe Metabo, DeWalt or Milwaukee's version of a certain tool I wanted was slightly better than Makita's one. But, as I say, not twice or three times as good, to justify that kind of outlay. So, like quite a few people commenting here, I'm kind of stuck with supporting the blue team now --even when they occasionally get outplayed by their opponents.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Tradesperson. There's a reason Milwaukee, Makita, DeWalt, AEG, and Bosch, are wildly popular. They're almost entirely indistinguishable. We also have some Hilti branded cordless tools, also fine. My personal preference for home use is something like Ryobi One+ or Ozito PXC (less than half the price of the One+) because I'm actually at work all day using power and cordless tools supplied by work, I don't plan on taking my home tools to three or four hundred commercial construction sites or building 1000 houses with them. Tool brand preference is, in my opinion, largely a sport-like

twblalock 4y ago

> Next up I'd like to see them do the same for the plethora of incompatible cordless power-tool systems out there as they did with insisting all mobile phones standardise on a USB connector. We should all be glad that didn't happen with micro-USB or some of the worse connectors years ago, because we would still be stuck with them. USB-C was innovated by the market, not by EU bureaucrats.

pvarangot 4y ago

rlpb 4y ago

I don't mind so long as third parties are free to make compatible batteries and tools. Unfortunately there's no reasonable migration path for someone already invested in tools and batteries. Unlike phones that get cycled through in just a few years, I am invested in my tools with the expectation that the majority of my less-used tools will last my lifetime. I'd like to be able to buy replacement compatible batteries for at least that long.

jayd16 4y ago

Sadly this decision will lead to more fragmentation, not less, won't it? Would have be nice if there was a path forward for Android standards.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> The EU does have its [many!] faults. Curious/out of the loop: any (unbiased?) examples?