Comment by whitehexagon

(Gouach co-founder) Thanks for your comment! That's exactly what we're trying to do, giving back power to people by providing them stuff that they truly own, they know how it works, they can assemble and repair them (or ask their local bike-shop to do it) without any vendor lock-in!

> Even better if they make it into a generic power bank design; 48V would be perfect for connecting to solar panel for charge, then use it on the bike, lawnmower, laptop, maybe a small 230V inverter add-on.

Great idea, I would love to see them offer solar chargers as well.

I was thinking of designing an open source UPS at some point, I guess I could architect it around this battery (though LiFePo would make more sense). I will have a look at the docs when they are out, I hope there's a communication/diagnosis bus, though Bluetooth would work as well.

From a device manufacturer's perspective, it is mainly a safety and reliability issue.

The form factor might be (mostly) standardized, but the cells themselves are not. There's a huge amount of variation between them, and using a cell improperly can quickly lead to some very nasty fires.

This means user-replaceable bare cells go right out the window, and you're left having to build a custom protection circuit for the cells you want to use - which means you essentially end up with custom batteries.

The solution might be a standardized way for the cell to communicate its health and capabilities to the device using it - but good luck getting the industry to adopt it. It provides no immediate benefit to the consumer while making the product more expensive, so they'll only do that when the government forces them to.