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

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.

  • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    17
    ·
    16 days ago

    So? As long as they deliver the ebike, what do you care about the financial health of the company after that?

    • Krzd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      16 days ago

      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