Step one, force all battery manufacturers to switch to rechargeable cells. Keep all the existing sizes for now, but no more disposable batteries. What Panasonic did with Eneloop was make rechargeable AAA and AA batteries. If you want C or D, there’s a cheap plastic adapter for the AAs that turn them into C and D-sized batteries. So an aggressive approach would be to force C and D to discontinue and use AAs in adapters from now on. Continue making disposable 9-volt until they’re no longer needed, and alert manufacturers to stop making products that require 9-volt.
Step two, reduce “coin” batteries down to a single size (for simplicity, the same width as the smallest existing coin battery and the same thickness as the thinnest existing coin battery), force all new devices that need coin batteries to adopt that size. Keep making disposable coin batteries in all sizes until they’re no longer needed, and alert manufacturers to switch to the new universal size.
Then draft a bunch of different flat rectangle size standards that manufacturers can build products around.
In all cases, there will be exceptions that need custom-sized batteries. But for now this will keep the industry and standards bodies busy and make things easier for consumers as quickly as possible.
Step one, force all battery manufacturers to switch to rechargeable cells. Keep all the existing sizes for now, but no more disposable batteries. What Panasonic did with Eneloop was make rechargeable AAA and AA batteries. If you want C or D, there’s a cheap plastic adapter for the AAs that turn them into C and D-sized batteries. So an aggressive approach would be to force C and D to discontinue and use AAs in adapters from now on. Continue making disposable 9-volt until they’re no longer needed, and alert manufacturers to stop making products that require 9-volt.
Step two, reduce “coin” batteries down to a single size (for simplicity, the same width as the smallest existing coin battery and the same thickness as the thinnest existing coin battery), force all new devices that need coin batteries to adopt that size. Keep making disposable coin batteries in all sizes until they’re no longer needed, and alert manufacturers to switch to the new universal size.
Then draft a bunch of different flat rectangle size standards that manufacturers can build products around.
In all cases, there will be exceptions that need custom-sized batteries. But for now this will keep the industry and standards bodies busy and make things easier for consumers as quickly as possible.