Do what EVs do: make 100% on the display not 100.0% electro-chemically and 0% not be 0.0% chemically.
This is a serious suggestion, as I think it’s actually net beneficial for the consumer.
This is a serious suggestion, as I think it’s actually net beneficial for the consumer.
Playing fast and loose with the numbers, I'm sure that if 100% on the display was 80% in the battery and 0% was 20%, you'd have an amazing number of charge cycles. You could program that 40% of unused capacity to be reduced as the battery ages very slowly, and by the time the used capacity is only at 80% of its original revealed capacity you're at many thousands of cycles. But you'd have a phone or car that weighed 40% more and cost 40% more than one that had no buffer and ran at the bleeding edge on day 1.
Absent breakthroughs in battery chemistry, this basically regulates the amount of buffer capacity that manufacturers are required to include in their ~~lies~~ marketing materials.
But it would also behave on day 1000 just as well as when the user agreed to buy it on day 1, meaning they’re likely still ok with it.