Tesla, Apple, and any other upstart business is entirely welcome to submit their connector or cable standard to the appropriate forum for evaluation. Because they avoid this, they get targeted by corrective legislation. Particularly when they take Apple's pathetic example of charging a licensing fee for class-compliant serial connectors.
> the EU is hell-bent on locking it in for eternity.
No it hasn't. The EU Commission also gets the right to examine future common charging solutions.
Also your comparison is not apt. The USB-C port is not required if the device does not require a wired charging port just as a computing device without a serial interface does not need a DB9 connector.
How exactly did the EU define "USB-C" because there are all sorts of ways it could have been defined that leave wiggle-room for future advancements (even now, I believe the USB-C port on an iPhone may actually be a Thunderbolt port ...)
I'm glad the federal government isn't forcing computer manufacturers to include them.
Guess we better hope USB-C is the best port a phone can possibly have, because the EU is hell-bent on locking it in for eternity.