9mo ago

Guy makes “dodgy e-bike” from 130 used vapes to make point about e-waste

Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones.

To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger "3,500 puff" types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.

99 comments

Those little colored flavored vapes are IMHO one of the worst vapes. Once they're done, there's no replacing the flavor. I see them often at the rehab I work at. I've seen some with replaceable flavor cartridges, but those are also bad due to the excessive plastic waste.
I'm all for vapes as a means to quit, but they're also excessively used as a means of maintaining the habit.
- I’m not a vape user, but the model is the kind of thing that just makes me so angry.
  In a world that makes sense:
  small, mostly metal vape chassis
  rechargeable, replaceable battery
  built-in glass reservoir with charging valve
  vape juice sold in medium to large recyclable cans with standard interface to the charging valve
  In a world where Profit is God (the real world):
  disposable chassis
  disposable battery
  if it’s refillable at all, it’s via non-recyclable, mixed material, mostly plastic, proprietary cartridges and you can save 5% if you subscribe online for refills, 10% if you pay yearly, $5 credit if you refer a friend on social media using hashtag #smoovape
  probably gives you turbo cancer because the juice is made in a repurposed Freon plant that was inadequately converted and they just don’t answer the phone when the FDA or EPA call
  
  We used to have a great vape market for those types of vapes. Since 2020 state and fed government has rinsed the market “for the kids” and basically created what we see now, a market of 98% disposable sold by overseas companies. Before that there were countless brands making batteries, tanks, etc. now a lot of smoke shops don’t even sell refillable vapes or liquid.
  
  I think part of it is something else - ease of use and ease of access.
  The "world that makes sense" product exists already:
  https://www.elementvape.com/box-mod-kits
  While I was vaping I mixed my own liquids though, as the cost savings was immense and I could easily lower the nicotine mg/ml on my own until I quit it altogether.
  
  The first thing you described is literally what we used to have. God I miss the good old days of vaping.
- Yeah tbh I've never really seen anyone successfully quit through vaping. Nicotine pouches or lozenges are much more effective imo.
  I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but like you said, the vast majority of people vaping are just maintaining.
  
  Assuming non-wasteful delivery methods, I'd still call that a win as vaping is generally less harmful to the health of the user.
  Quitting is of course preferable, but I support harm reduction policies in general
  
  I know quite a few people that have quit through vaping, and even if they hadn't, vapes are definitely better for their health than cigarettes.
  
  I just started vaping more AND smoking because I could vape in my dorm during winter.....
  
  The bonus for vapes is you can wean off nicotine at a super precise rate. You can mix your nicotine juice with more and more non-nicotine juice to achieve greater and greater levels of dilution until the nicotine dose you're taking is so low that it doesn't matter to stop.
Yeah, disposable vapes should be made illegal, not only are they lowering the bar for the access because they're cheap and accessible to minors, not only because they are an e-waste, but because it wastes valuable lithium, also those are perfectly chargeable batteries, is a bit fucked up that it's more profitable to use rechargeable lithium batteries than something disposable
- is a bit fucked up that it's more profitable to use rechargeable lithium batteries than something disposable
  That's because the global manufacturing industries have almost exclusively gone over to lithium-ion batteries. Disposable batteries are ceasing to be commodity items. It's seriously difficult to find a D cell battery these days.
- My evil side wants them to be more popular where I live so I can collect massive amounts of lithium batteries for free
Disposable vapes will be banned in the UK starting in June 2025.
Based.
- Just wanted to comment that this should happen faster than in a few years... and then checked the calendar
  
  Still there's no reason to wait that long. Ban now the supply to the stores and full ban on 2025 if they still have stock.
- They should never have been allowed in the first place
  
  I'm angry it took this long. Should've been banned the second they came onto the market.
cool! in no time at all, disposable vapes will usurp cigarette butts as the #1 form of litter across the globe! but in all seriousness, god bless this guy. hopefully his example will inspire people to be slightly less careless and slightly more cognizant of how they dispose of their waste (audience laughter turns to applause)
Hats off to the dude for not wasting the batteries. However, I would not want ass and balls near those cheap Chinese made lithium batteries.
- aren't pretty much all Li(Fe)Po cells made cheaply in China?
  
  That's a fair point, but I still don't want them near my taint!
Perhaps it's odd, but I have never seen anyone use a vape in public. Nor have I seen one just lying on the ground. I maybe need to get out the forest here and visit civilization for a bit again.
- They are super common where weed is legal. People fly into somewhere like Denver for the weekend to catch a show. Rather than buying a reusable battery, they will get a disposable vape (and probably some gummies).
  Then it ends up in the landfill or as litter. I am in favor of making these one time use electronics illegal (along with single use plastics like balloons, plastic silverware, etc.. but that is another thread)
  
  They aren't even disposable, so it's crazy to me how they can be sold as such.
  
  Yeah, I live in legal weed state. The nearest dispensary is a mere 20 miles away. I'm not even sure they sell vapes. Flower and edibles for sure, but I have no idea if they sell vapes. (I've never been there-- weed just ain't my thing). But I still don't see any used ones tossed out. Maybe we are just neater people here and don't litter.
- Go to a nightclub sometime. Discounted vapes in the outside areas are a tripping Hazard.
  
  Gigs and concerts are pretty grim for this now too.
  
  Discarded vapes? The only immediate trip hazard of tripping on discounted vapes would be the mob of people trying to buy them.
  
  Ain't no night clubs within 100 miles of me. Plenty of bars, but no night clubs.
- I guess you’ll have to start spending more time in high school bathrooms.
  
  I had that misfortune when I was teaching math at my local school for 4 years.
- Despite the larger size and bright colors, they're a bit more discreet than cigarettes. Most places that ban cigarettes equally ban vapes, so they're often concealed more. That probably has a spillover effect to areas they're allowed. They're only activated when sucked, so, unlike a cigarette that's burning whether you suck it or not, most people take a puff or 3 of vape and then go a few minutes without it. It's not as obvious as a person deliberately smoking one whole cigarette.
  But maybe they're not around you. I think the other comments covered the locations well enough, sarcasm included. But if you suddenly smell something sweet like fruit or cereal, casually take a look for someone vaping
  
  Oh I've seen pictures of them. Just haven't seen one in the real world nor seen one tossed on the ground. I do suspect they just aren't popular around me. Smokers around here probably prefer real cigarettes.
- I mean, yeah. Have you ever been outside?
  
  I probably spend more time you side than you do. I just mostly do it in a forest.
- really? they're almost as common as cigarette butts once were now. are you a hermit?
  
  I wouldn't claim to be all that enamored of humans as a rule. But I'm not a hermit in the classic sense.
  
  I've never seen a discarded vape, but I've seen a lot of people vaping, as well as a lot of cigarettes and butts. That said, I spend almost zero time downtown, so my exposure is mostly my work parking lot and a few stores.
  
  The basement has been good to me to.
I so so want to purchase an ebike.But the companies don't seem likely to stick around for long though.
- You pretty much should only buy one from a shop that has a physical location near you and can do repairs. Like everybody around me sells Trek, so if I ever got one, it'd be a Trek with a Bosch motor. Bike shops will not repair ebikes they don't sell, even though they'll repair regular bikes. And neither Trek nor Bosch are going anywhere.
- I see your point, but I also saw Juiced Bikes go out of business last month after 15 years in the industry.
- I wouldn't worry about it too much. The bikes are very simple and the battery pack can be rebuilt. Any decent bike shop should be able to repair an orphaned e-bike.
  
  Most will not repair an ebikes outside of the brand they sell. I'd ask the shop first.
- I bought one from Aventon. It was easy to repair and didn't require anything special.
- My problem with Ebikes is the number of regular bikes stolen. No way I want to haul a ebike up and down my basement stairs a couple times a day.
- Get one from Halfords then. They'll repair any e-bike that they sell and they sell a wide variety of brands. Where I got mine from.
- Engwe has been around for some time, have one of their bikes (M20). If a part fails, you just need to send them an email, and they'll give you a price and picture of the part and they'll send it out to you. I have had to replace my rear fender and the front light once and they've arrived quite fast (to Europe). Although they aren't high quality bikes, they're priced accordingly.
- I'm going to build one. Total cost will be >$1k for the mid drive motor and battery (not counting the bike itself), but it'll be way faster than the street legal stuff they sell at stores. They're dead simple since they're just bikes with a motor and battery pack, so any shop could work on it.
  If you want something cheaper, there are other simple retrofit options as well.
- So? As long as they deliver the ebike, what do you care about the financial health of the company after that?
  
  Support. Warranties. Replacement parts.
  
  Damn, this warranty is still in effect for a few more weeks, and the company's gone...
  
  Proprietary spare parts. The motors might be off the shelf so you could grab parts from a different manufacturer. But controllers and batteries are usually proprietary making repairs much more complicated and cost-inefficient
To be fair the supposedly reusable pod kits only lasted me about a month or maybe two before whatever sensor that activates it when you draw breaks (what's wrong with buttons) .
That said all these disposables should at the very least be rechargeable it's truly stupid to buy something with a single charge I bet half of these are sold at about 60 percent or so battery and who will know.
- I actually had that with the first ecig I ever bought with the draw activation (looked like a cig but blue light, itactivated in my pocket and I needed to throw it sharpish).
  Yeah agreed nothing should be disposable with a lithium battery. I've just the feeling a lot of vapes are just designed to die as fast as possible even when it comes to reusable stuff .
  
  Honestly the entire idea of disposable vapes should be scrapped.
  I think I know to which european union you can write a letter to to ban them
- Any disposable I've bought that doesnt have a recharge port the battery was dead with at least 20% ejuice remaining.
- They are almost all rechargeable where I live (US) because there's more juice in them than one charge will handle.
It should be mandatory that all electronics be recycled by the manufacturer or seller, and the cost of recycled should be reflected on the product price.
I would design the pack with a thermal fuse of about 60 degrees C stuck between each 3 cells.
This way if one of those crappy cells start overheating the fuse should prevent it from going into thermal runaway.
sounds like a joke
On the other hand, I think cigarette butts are also quite polluting the environment too. So I am not sure what's worse.
- They make vape cartridges that are used with a reusable battery. If disposable vapes were banned, they would become the more common option which is definitely better.
- Does it matter which is worse when we can take care of both problems?
  No one ever talks about stopping cigarettes from being filtered. It's not as if the filter actually makes cigarettes safe. They just make them easier on your lungs as you smoke and you're less likely to get bits of tobacco in your mouth. Maybe that shouldn't be a thing?
  
  Filters could be made biodegradable. Batteries? Probably but not in our lifetime.
- Ah ,yes batteries that can explode if heated are way more dangerous than tobaco ash.
  
  First of all, we are not talking here about ash but the cigarette filters, 4.5 trillions of it are littered every year, that contain all the toxins, are made of plastic fibers and it is not bio degradable.
  https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/harmful-effects-tobacco/5-ways-cigarette-litter-impacts-environment#:~:text=Is%20cigarette%20waste%20toxic%3F,animals%20who%20eat%20cigarette%20butts.

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