If I look at say my laptop or phone, they definitely aren't compatible with newer batteries even if it's technically feasible so why would we expect cars to be?
The reason it's not true for laptops is that batteries aren't standard form factor sizes in laptops.
You might notice that Li-Ion AA batteries CAN'T be charged by Ni-Cd or Ni-MH AA battery chargers. Even a smaller change like Ni-MH to Ni-Zn requires different equipment.
This is like suggesting that my computer can't go from AMD to nvidia because they would need to know deep specifics about AMD's proprietary chips to support them. But that's what drivers are for!
Most chemistries can be charged using the same "constant current up to this voltage, constant voltage to the max voltage" method, just need to set the right values.
Seeing the 4G rollout was a good economic course in environmental pollution and abandonded psuedo-innovation. All of the older surplus 2G/3G/4G hardware and abandonded software was sold to developing countries. Now every device on tcp/ip has inferior muck with an out-of-date ecosystem.
Desktop computing had it right when the information superhighway still existed. Just install new hardware thats backwards compatible (the hardware was forward compatible by design).
The tabloid quality fodder and disposible commerce has always been 3rd world, much in the same way that tcp/ip evolved.
Anything for an inferior integer to stay relevant, huh? The environmental impact is someone elses problem :p