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I’m suspicious of this vision because for example, with battery packs, cells with compatible voltage and size have vastly different characteristics.

Those characteristics, like safe discharge rate, capacity, projected cycle count, are all things that manufactures exaggerate or get wrong.

I don’t think there’s any way that consumers can ever be informed enough to have an efficient market in products such as those

I can imagine a future where batteries and chargers communicate using an open-source protocol just as they are doing now over USB.

If the batteries are a full pack which contain their own internal charge controller, etc. Raw cells can't communicate anything.

The problem is the consumer can't tell the difference between a well engineered pack and one that will explode in their apartment overnight.