Nearly twenty years ago I had a consulting job with a Turkish firm that made white goods: washers, dryers, etc. They explained their R&D problem to me. To sell in Europe, they had to meet EU specifications for things like water consumption, electricity consumption, and noise level. Each year the responsible EU agency would look at the performance of each model on the market. For the next year, they would set the specifications based on the "best" 90% (as I recall) of this year's models. "What? You can't meet the spec? But 90% of all the models on the market this year met it." So the EU kept driving down the water & electricity consumption, noise level, etc. year after year.
Part of my job was to help them forecast what the specs would be in future years, so that their R&D lab could get started early on meeting them. One of the issues was, just what was the theoretical least possible water consumption to wash clothes? I wonder what this innovation will do to EU requirements for minimizing water consumption.
One of the issues was, just what was the theoretical least possible water consumption to wash clothes? That's how Big Gummint works. You figure out the "least possible," then they come up with a number less than yours, and tells you to figure it out. Pretty sure that's how they do the CAFE standards for cars.