It’s not a project for most people, but watching someone ride up to 20 miles, and up to 30 mph, on tossed-out vape batteries is transfixing.

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.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    20·
    2 months ago

    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.