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

Most one-use vape batteries are actually rechargeable, and this guy has proof.

Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones. More than 260 million vape batteries are estimated to enter the trash stream every year in the UK alone. Vapers and vape makers are simply leaving an e-waste epidemic to the planet's future residents to sort out.

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.

To be clear: Do not do this. Do not put disposable vape cartridges in a vise clamp to "pop out" their components. Do not desolder them from vape cartridges that have a surprising amount of concentration still in them. Do not wire them together using a balance board, group them using 3D-printed cell holders, and then wire them in series. Heck, do not put that much power into a rear hub on a standard bike frame, at least more than once. Doel has a fire extinguisher present and visible on his workbench, and he shows you what happens when two of the wrong batteries happen to make momentary contact—smoke, coughing, and strong warnings.

And yet, when you see Doel get 33 kilometers (about 20.5 miles) on his vape-powered ride, almost entirely without pedaling, hitting 32 miles per hour once, the point is made. We are tossing out a lot of battery materials that could be doing a lot of other things. Doel estimates his "dodgy bike" cost about $60 in filament and materials to piece together. Most of the cells are rated for a minimum of 300 cycles, which is both not a lot, but also more than some bikes and scooters actually take on.

Disposable vapes will be banned in the UK starting in June 2025. In the US, most disposable vapes, and a wide variety of other vape products that would lure in younger users, should be illegal, unless they're one of 34 tobacco vape products approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But the FDA rule was targeted at pre-filled nicotine cartridges for reusable devices, like Juul, and left disposable models in a gray area. Into this vagary swept hundreds of brands and thousands of their products.

The FDA has occasionally issued warning letters, but disposable vapes can often wiggle their way past regulators through name changes, like Elf Bar has done. The Associated Press reported in June 2023 that more than 9,000 new vape products have appeared in the US since the FDA began requiring registration in 2020. That surge "has been almost entirely driven by Chinese-manufactured disposables," Matthew Perrone at the AP writes.

The US Public Interest Research Group estimates 11.9 million disposable vapes were sold in the US in March 2023. Because liquid nicotine is classified by the EPA as a hazardous waste, e-waste recycling is mostly impossible. And because the devices contain lithium-ion batteries, they cannot easily be otherwise recycled, including for Drug Enforcement Agency buybacks. US PIRG suggests the lithium contained in each year's wasted vapes in the US is about 23.6 tons, or enough for 2,600 electric vehicles.