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.

    • aard@kyu.deEnglish
      351·
      19 days ago

      Just wanted to comment that this should happen faster than in a few years… and then checked the calendar

      • Railcar8095@lemm.eeEnglish
        81·
        18 days ago

        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.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          18 days ago

          It’s very normal to give businesses a short period to make arrangements/sell off stock.

          They were never going to pass a law that banned them right from that second.

          This is a good move. The damage that will continue to happen for the next 6 months or whatever is miniscule compared to the damage of just allowing it to continue indefinitely. Hopefully other countries follow suit.

        • EnderMB@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          18 days ago

          I imagine a lot of it is to remove current stock, and because the UK has several tobacco companies that moved into vapes, and also employ hundreds