Disposable vapes aren’t quite the problem/resource stream they once were, with many jurisdictions moving to ban the absurdly wasteful little devices, but there are still a lot of slightly-smelly lithium batteries in the wild. You might be forgiven for thinking that most of them seem to be in [Chris Doel]’s UK workshop, given that he’s now cruising around what has to be the world’s only vape-powered car.
Technically, anyway; some motorheads might object to calling donor vehicle [Chris] starts with a car, but the venerable G-Wiz has four wheels, four seats, lights and a windscreen, so what more do you want? Horsepower in excess of 17 ponies (12.6 kW)? Top speeds in excess of 50 Mph (80 km/h)? Something other than the dead weight of 20-year-old lead-acid batteries? Well, [Chris] at least fixes that last part.
The conversion is amazingly simple: he just straps his 500 disposable vape battery pack into the back seat– the same one that was powering his shop–into the GWiz, and it’s off to the races. Not quickly, mind you, but with 500 lightly-used lithium cells in the back seat, how fast would you want to go? Hopefully the power bank goes back on the wall after the test drive, or he finds a better mounting solution. To [Chris]’s credit, he did renovate his pack with extra support and insulation, and put all the cells in an insulated aluminum box. Still, the low speed has to count as a safety feature at this point.
Charging isn’t fast either, as [Chris] has made the probably-controversial decision to use USB-C. We usually approve of USB-Cing all the things, but a car might be taking things too far, even one with such a comparatively tiny battery. Perhaps his earlier (equally nicotine-soaked) e-bike project would have been a better fit for USB charging.
Thanks to [Vaughna] for the tip!
He just showed the USB-C charger as a way to advertise for just that, a product that he is making and will be putting up for sale soon. I see the point in a pocket-sized charger for bicycle battery packs.
So where are people actually finding the used vapes to rescue batteries from? In my part of the Northeast, tobacco use was already dropping rapidly as the baby boomers have been doing the same, so I don’t see a lot of vape usage. (People may be smoking other things, but…) Am I looking in the wrong state, or just in the wrong places?
The Northeast of what? There’s likely a great deal of national and regional variation in vape consumption, just like most other consumption patterns. [Chris] is in the UK, and most of the batteries in this project came from the cleanup at a music festival, if I recall his previous video correctly.
I am still wondering where people are finding these used vapes. I think I may have seen one.
Same and same.
Same and same seconded.
Littering my city streets. Especially in front of schools, bars districts. I also collect them and can now fully disassemble one under 1 minute, then charge them immediately. 90% are pristine, actually good quality batteries.
damn good use, there are tons of used vapes if you look around say after a hedge is trimmed near a school
And that is just OUTSIDE of the fence
The point about biohazard is a good one, though. I might be willing to play with lithium batteries; hazardous chemicals are less interesting to me.
The Netherlands has effectively banned refillable vapes. There used to be a huge market for them, with tons of modding, diy vapes etc. Then they banned all non tobacco flavored liquids and there was suddenly a huge market for vapes with other flavors. This started in 2023 I think and after that, suddenly there are disposable vapes everywhere. I see tons of people at work smoke disposable vapes, I see it at schools, everywhere. This used to not be a thing before the ban. The old vapes you could refill are pretty much gone. There used to be several shops near me that sold them, all closed because of the new laws. They sold battery cases with replaceable 18650’s in them, it’s gone. Disposable is the replacement. I got at least 50 empty vapes at home that I got from people so I could reuse the batteries for other things.
Do they all use the same cell size or 2 or 3? I can’t see lots of different sized cells working in a series-parallel battery. Safety issues with equalizing is hard to keep in line.