I’ve become aware of AA rechargeables that are Li-ion based. Each battery has an inbuilt circuit to reduce the volts from 3.7 to 1.5.
I have a few old AA rechargeables, but they only give 1.2 or so volts. For some applications they work fine for months but other applications do need the full 1.5V.
The only two drawbacks I can see are:
(a) cost (12 to 15 euros each)
and
(b) any meter or gauge on the device with such a battery will show full until the minute the battery voltage precipitously falls. So no good for our chip-reading catflap!