Do you have a source for this? Because all I know is that this was an April fools joke from last year. I'm curious of the EU is now actually doing this.

Too bad this wasn't real, especially since at the end of the day, all these things are just using 18560 cells.

I tried to standardize on one system (Hikoki 18/36V). This was great as they use the same battery across consumer and pro products. But I moved from Japan to Europe and they are far less available, and more expensive. Now I buy Parkside stuff (Lidl brand) and they are probably a tier lower but better value and also use the same battery across consumer and pro products.

Anyway I felt lucky that I could buy both low and high(er) end cordless tools in two countries/brands and also find adapters to use both batteries in both sets of tools. Both systems don't have any sort of data handshake between tool and battery. Going forward, this will probably increasingly be the case so I would love for a standard to be enforced.

This would be painful in the short term because all my current tools and batteries would likely become obsolete, but it would be cool to see manufacturers more vigorously competing on battery specs like power and energy density.

There's also the risk that tool prices could go up as I suspect some tools are currently sold as a loss-leader to get you into "the system".

Unrelated, but Makita 18v has been an "unofficial" standard for cheap Chinese tool.

We've had universal adapters for ages. You can run a DeWalt battery on a Milwaukee, Makita on DeWalt, etc. I even have an adapter to run my Milwaukee M18 batteries on my Dyson vacuum. You can run a wire to the pos/neg leads on the battery and use it standalone. I use it to power temporary reverse off-road lights on my truck. I see no reason to do this sort of thing. More oppressive regulation from the EU that no one actually wants. Fortunately Milwaukee is a US company as well as a dominant player in the market and will likely not participate in this whatsoever.