Apple Might Try to Skirt the EU’s New Removable Battery Rule

Mar 24, 2024

Shortly after mandating that all mobile electronics sold in the European Union possess a USB-C charging port, Europe has taken a stab at standardizing easily removable smartphone batteries by 2027. In a set of rules proposed last month, the EU declared that all smartphone owners should be able to remove the batteries from their devices without special tools or skills. The European Council has since adopted the rules—and one smartphone maker in particular doesn't seem very happy.

True to form, Apple appears to be looking for ways to avoid the EU’s new removable battery mandate. John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, chatted about the company’s product engineering strategy in a video on the German YouTube channel ORBIT.

“We want to focus on making sure our customers have easy access to repair the things that are most likely to require repair,” Ternus said. “There sometimes can be a bit of a conflict between the durability and the repairability. You can make an internal component more repairable by having it discrete and removable, but that inherently adds a potential failure point.”

Ternus added that his team uses “a data-driven approach” to walk that line. “By using the data, we can understand what parts of the phone need to be repaired and which are the ones where it’s actually better to make them so robust that they never need to be repaired. It’s always kind of a balance.”

The EU’s new rules don’t apply until 2027. With Apple’s annual autumn release just a month or so away, we know the iPhone 15 definitely won’t include an easily removable battery. A reliable leaker shared in July that the iPhone 15 will likely feature a stacked battery configuration that facilitates higher capacities and longer battery life. This means that if Apple introduces a removable battery, it’ll be with the iPhone 16 or later, buying the company some time to finagle its loopholes with the EU.

“We want to have it all. We want Apple products to still be Apple products,” Ternus told ORBIT.

Lisa Jackson, vice president of Apple’s environment, policy, and social initiatives division, emphasized in the video that Apple is committed to sustainable business practices—just maybe not in the way customers might like. Jackson said 250 of Apple’s suppliers—around 85% of the company’s supply spend—”have agreed” to use clean energy to produce materials. (Whether that means some have yet to implement such practices is unclear.) It also aims to use recycled metals and possess a 100% carbon-neutral supply chain by 2030. That’s all good, but it doesn’t ensure customers can conduct quick, easy, and inexpensive repairs, which is part of what the EU’s removable battery rule aims to do.