Anyone who’s walked through the grounds of a music festival or even peeked into a public trash bin has likely noticed a deluge of discarded, single-use nicotine vapes. These vapes have surged in popularity, with the United Nations estimating at least 844 million of them were discarded by 2022 alone. As many as 500,000 vapes were thrown out every day in 2023, despite the fact that the lithium-ion batteries used to power them could often be recharged. It’s one of the more glaring examples of e-waste enabled by inexpensive, discardable electronics. But what if all those discarded vapes could be reused to power something else?
That’s a question United Kingdom-based YouTuber Chris Doel has been exploring with increasingly over-the-top videos. In the past, he has collected hundreds of discarded vapes and combined them to power a “dodgy e-bike”. Upping the ante, Doel recently made a battery pack powered by used vapes that’s capable of providing enough energy to power his home workshop. Naturally, those experiments led him to an even more daunting challenge: powering (and driving) an electric vehicle using discarded vapes. Spoiler: it worked—at least for a little while.
I Powered a Car using 500 Disposable Vape Batteries
In a video that currently has nearly 400,000 views, the YouTuber breaks down how he used power generated from over 500 disposable vapes to power a Reva G-Wiz, a tiny, infamously low-powered EV from the early 2000s. The scavenged vapes were combined in 14 separate 3D-printed rows of batteries. When combined, they had enough juice to create a 50-volt, 2.5-kilowatt-hour battery pack. That was enough not only to start the G-Wiz, but also powered it for 18 miles, hitting a top speed approaching 40 miles per hour at times. That might not cut it for practical, everyday commuters, but it does show just how much goes to waste when all those vapes are flippantly thrown out.
“Unfortunately we seem to live in some crazy dystopia where buying these single use devices and then chucking them away is totally normalized, despite them having fully rechargeable lithium ion cells inside them,” Doel says in the video.
Turing scavenged vapes into a working battery pack
Doel says that he found many of his discarded vapes at the littered grounds of a music festival. After collecting them, he tested each of their lithium-ion battery cells to determine which ones were still viable. From there, he arranged the vape batteries into row-based modules capable of storing around 2.3 kilowatt-hours of energy.
The G-Wiz, which Doel described as “one of the world’s worst cars,” was chosen purely for practical purposes. While there isn’t anything theoretically stopping someone from powering a more modern EV with vapes, their much larger battery capacities would require a ridiculous amount of vapes. Doel estimates he would likely need 12,000 vape cells to power a Tesla. By contrast, the G-Wiz is comparatively puny. It achieves just 17 horsepower and reaches a max speed of 50 miles per hour on a good day. That understated performance largely led to its commercial demise, but it also made it a great contender for Doel’s experiment.
“Getting it [the vape battery pack] to work on modern cars would be possible, but not really feasible,” Doel said.
But powering the EV wasn’t quite as straightforward as simply swapping out its battery pack with the vape-powered one. He first needed to build a solid enclosure to make sure the individual battery cells wouldn’t bounce around in the moving vehicle. That was accomplished by bolting together several aluminum panels.
For added safety, Doel installed a battery management system to constantly monitor the voltage of each battery cell. Temperature probes were also placed throughout the battery pack, which would trigger a small bell if any of the regions got too hot. That’s critical because excess heat in battery cells causes thermal runaway, a reaction that has famously caused EV batteries to catch fire. Doel’s resulting system was relatively safe by his account, but definitely should not be tried at home.
Once the safety precautions were taken, Doel replaced the G-Wiz’s original 50-volt battery with his makeshift battery pack. Immediately, it was clear the system worked to power the car’s primary functions. However, Doel did have to install a separate DC-DC converter to power auxiliary functions like the headlights and windshield wipers. Perhaps most interestingly, the YouTuber was able to charge his entire system using a USB-C adapter connected to a 138-watt laptop charger. That means that in addition to this being the first vape-powered car, it’s also likely the first EV capable of being charged via USB-C.
“I can’t believe this car has just accepted this crazy Frankenstein battery that I’ve just slapped in it,” he says in the video.
Driving a vape-powered car
With all the preparation out of the way, it was time to take the vape-powered EV out for a spin—on public roads, no less. The video shows Doel driving slowly around town, occasionally generating a brief traffic jam behind him. One of his colleagues sitting in the passenger seat also had his hand ready to hit the circuit breaker at all times in case something went wrong. Luckily, the improvised battery rose to the occasion.
Doel took his vape-powered car through a fastfood drive-through, and used it to complete some daily errands like a trip to the hardware store. In total, the car made it around 18 miles before the battery gave out. For brief moments he was able to push the car up to 40 miles per hour, just a touch short of the car’s max speed using a conventional battery system.
Remarkably, Doel claims his Frankenstein-esque vehicle was fully insured and that the insurance company was actually aware of his vape-powered battery pack. He admits his resulting insurance plan is “quite expensive.” Overall though, Doel says he was pleasantly surprised by how well the experiment worked in practice. It also serves as a powerful illustration of an age-old adage: one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Or in this case, another person’s energy.
“I bet that none of the 500 people who smoked them vapes ever expected their vapes to be literally powering my house, and now my car,” Doel added. in the video. “I think we all need a big think as to what we actually classify as waste.”
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