[hjnilsson]

Problem is the tradeoffs involved.

You can make a cable that support 40 Gbps / 100W, but it will be $50 and very thick, with a maximum length of 1m (or cost $400 if you want an optical 10m long cable).

Or you can make a thin, 480Mbps / 5W cable that costs $2 that can be 5m long.

Or you can make a 10Gbps / 20W cable that is $10, can be 2m and is medium thick.

If you want them all in one cable, all cables would be $400, which would be a larger problem for most consumers (and even optical cables can't really be bent / are very fragile. So unfit for travel. Not a good solution either). You can't have everything in one cable.

You could claim that there should be 3 separate connectors then for the 3 cases above. But I don't think that would be an improvement really. At least you /can/ charge your laptop with the thin cable overnight, even if it is slow. And you can connect your phone to your laptop charger etc.