As far as I can tell, Gen Z is all about two things: Suckling from disposable vapes and riding newfangled electronic bicycles. Now, thanks to a YouTuber, those two generational pastimes can now be combined into one by powering an e-bike with batteries reclaimed from disposed vapes.
Chris Doel, a YouTuber out of the UK who seems to have sprung up out of nothing earlier this year with immediately high-quality electrical engineering videos, is a master of extracting the batteries from disposable vapes and reworking them to fit other uses. He’s previously made power banks from the recovered cells, but now he’s leveled up his game by using them to create an entire 48-volt, 1500-watt battery pack for an ebike.
The video is both an interesting DIY guide and an admirable commitment to the reduction of e-waste, but it comes with a warning: You should almost certainly not try this at home. What Doel is doing is dangerous, and not to be undertaken by someone without a full understanding of the consequences for messing it up. The relative simplicity of the tutorial does raise a question: Why not offer this as a service?
We already buy plenty of items made from recycled materials, up to and including car interiors, so why not offer low-cost but well-constructed micromobility options made from recycled batteries? The CDC says Americans burned through nearly 12 million disposable vapes in 2022, and the number is only trending upwards — with Doel’s method, that’s enough battery cells for over 90,000 e-bikes.
The stalwart standard battery cell, the 18650, costs a minimum of 10 cents a pop. By swapping those out for free, recovered cells, there might be enough room in a manufacturer’s budget to start including high quality battery management systems, the lack of which cause all those cheap e-bike fires you’re always hearing about. If recycled batteries could make micromobility cheaper and safer, it sounds like a winning combo to me.
