Intrested in how this will develop!
Most of the "active" parts and fittings are repairable with effort, even if manuals and parts are not easy to get.
However in all modern fridges I have looked at, the structure is folded sheet metal which is not designed to be taken apart. Certain key panels cannot be opened out without distortion that will affect the fit. Inside the voids there is polystyrene (or similar) insulation.
Eventually that insulation gets stinky and moldy and that is pretty much the end of the fridge because the insulation is inaccessible and cannot be replaced. You can try hitting it through vents, with bleach, but you cannot get it back to "as new". This kind of non-mechanical failure eventually renders the fridge un-usable for food.
It seems like it would take an entirely different design to anything I have seen on the market to create a true "50 year fridge".
It all started with the Phoebus cartel in the 1920's and what we nowadays called "planned obsolescence" is a worldwide strategy by the industry.
A fridge is capable of lasting way more than 15 years. Many people use fridges or washing machines that are over 50 years. Anything that's not built to be repairable and last decades is just harmful to users and the environment. For example IoT is really something that should never exist.
For example, it will without any doubt take more energy/ressources to build a Raspberry Pi than to keep your old desktop computer powered.
However, from an economic perspective the opposite is true because as consumers we pay energy far greater prices than the industry does. Which means i can buy a raspberry pi for the price in electricity that my desktop would consume in a few years. That device will then use a lot less energy to run, but took so much to produce it's meaningless.
That is, without even taking into consideration recycling concerns. Recycling for electronics mostly doesn't exist (see open-air landfills with children taking metals apart using dangerous chemicals), and in any case also requires energy/resources and produces pollution.
We are economically incentivized to destroy the planet. All those "buy a new car" programs are not meant to save the planet, they're meant to save big corp profits by keeping everyone buying new stuff. That's what is really worrying in my view.
The price to pay is it's harder to open when you need to repair it, but that's a sometime-maybe-never activity, vs. using/holding it which is hours per day.
In other words: because of the construction method, lots of space is needed for structural elements.
Large glass screens require a rigid structure (or a border of some kind).
A lot of people are pretty happy with that. For those that aren't, there's been a lot of progress in engineering in the past two decades since the 3310 came out.
It's not impossible to make something strong, while enjoying newer features. If we had a conscious choice in the shop between a slimmer phone that'll break apart in 6 months, and a thicker phone we could keep for 10 years, most people i know would choose the latter. There's just no such information for customers.
> The battery is tiny.
That was a technical limitation of the time and does not apply to today's batteries.
The implicication of the article is that they won't have a choice. If your product doesn't meet the repairability standards then you won't be able to sell in the EU.