Have you seen this outside Italy? Everywhere else in Europe I've always seen the Europlug, it's only Italy where sometimes you have the weird 3-in-a-line plug, at least in Western Europe
Denmark has the smiley face plug. It works fine if you don't need a grounded connection, but still.. they have a lot of sockets that don't follow the EU standard.
I think France has the one where the ground pin sticks out? That can be a problem depending on which cable you have.
And then there's UK of course, though they're not part of EU anymore.
We have the UK plugs in Ireland too and we’re in the EU. I wish it was feasible to switch to the europlug, I wouldn’t have to carry a handful of adapters around when travelling.
Traveling much of Europe (humble brag) the only places where I have seen some noticeable difference is Britain (of course) Italy and Malta. That being said, any remotely modern building or establishment expecting travelers on Malta or Italy has plugs with at least USB-A or the two prong "European" (with the round prongs, don't know the standard name).
The UK is not in the EU and use all kinds of weird units and other nonsense. If they had stayed in the EU long enough, they would have caught up eventually, as will Italy.
I doubt we're changing the side of the road we drive on, but now it's much more expensive to import LHD used cars from the UK. I doubt that we're changing power plugs because there's hundreds of millions of them out there.
I'm not sure that other EU standards there would be that we don't have, being an EU member, except for decent cycling and mass transport infra, and that would be dramatic improvement.
true but also false: italian, french and german standards (and the rest of smaller european countries) are different but compatible. and i'm glad for that.
This is a great example in that residential electrical systems evolve at a snails pace. There's almost no innovation and most houses are full of dangerous legacy systems because regulation makes updating difficult and expensive.
Also of note: you aren't required by national or state law to use any kind of electrical system in the U.S. The National Electric Code is not a binding document. It's up to individual municipalities to decide whether they want to adopt it (or some other standard, which they're free to do).
Except electricians and the companies that insure them for professional liability, or the companies that insure houses against electrical fires use that national code as a reference, same for building codes, etc.
It's interesting to read the comments here from people that have equipment and stuff in their houses and cars and workplaces that are constrained by regulations and laws all around them, but are worried about a connector on their phone.
A "free" market needs regulation otherwise it develops into monopolies. Setting standards is a way to regulate to ensure a level playing field for competition.
It's not like the EU has rushed this decision, or that anyone is proposing some other standard that wasn't considered.
There are plenty of non governmental standards. Some like openGL or http are driven by industry consortiums. Others like keurig/Nespresso generic pods, x86 chips, or cup holder sizes are driven by compatibility with wildly successful products.
Edit: usb-c is both the former and the latter. Macbooks and ipads had already switched, it seems likely the next iphone would have been usb-c anyway, or perhaps portless.
You don't even know what else could have happened if there was no standardization. Maybe the industry must have progressed without the need of outlets in the first place.
Yeah, we would definitely use nuclear mini-reactors in our vacuum cleaners otherwise, if only it wasn’t for the damn EU!
These are very well understood areas, there is only so many ways you can transport electricity. Also, there is nothing stopping innovation “after” the plug. It’s like saying that HTTP somehow stifles innovation.