A man has powered an electric car using a homemade battery pack built out of discarded vapes, on a quest to show that so many valuable resources are being cast off every day.
Last year, GNN reported that Chris Doel had stripped down the lithium batteries from 500 disposable vapes, power sources he describes as “fully rechargeable”, to create a power-bank big enough to run his home.
Not willing to stop there, the 27-year-old engineer then decided to reuse the battery pack to power a trip in an electric car.
He needed a vehicle with a small battery so bought a 2007 G-Wiz for £800—named the worst car that year by Top Gear—and spent five months working on the project. He finally took it out for a spin last month.
The young man from Warwickshire, England, who calls himself “the engineer equivalent of a mad scientist”, documented the process on his YouTube channel, which has 164,000 subscribers. (Watch his new car video below…)
He went to the local vape shop last May asking if they would donate their “returns” for his house-battery project. He walked away with bags containing 2,000 vapes.
It took him six months during his free time at home, outside Birmingham, to extract the rechargeable lithium batteries from the devices. He then used a 3D printed case to combine 500 cells wired in parallel into groups connected in series to make a massive battery pack.
The completed pack successfully powered his house for eight hours, before finally running out of juice. Immediately, he set his sights on his next project: the car.
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“I was speaking with a colleague about how I wanted to power a vehicle, but because EVs have such enormous batteries, I thought it was never going to be possible,” Chris told SWNS news agency.
“My colleague came up with the genius idea of using the G-Wiz. It’s pretty much the only car out there with a 48v battery, (meaning) the power-wall would work with it.
The micro-car only requires a battery with a voltage of 48v—well below Tesla’s 400v. It has a max speed of just 50 mph, yet seats two adults and two small children.
It ran for two hours, covering a distance of 18 miles—entirely powered by vape batteries.
What about the flammability?
Chris bought insurance to cover liability, and was happy to pay around $700 for one year, saying, “Given the fact they’re taking the risk of it being a battery pack literally made of vape cells, it was incredibly cheap in the grand scheme of things.”
He spent five hours a day after work on weekdays, and 12 hours a day on weekends, for five months rewiring the car and sorting out the legal paperwork before he was finally able to take it out for a spin.
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“I stripped it all back to re-do all the wiring, making sure it was proper sturdy. I made a big enclosure—worst-case scenario—in case it were to go up in flames. I would want it to be at least somewhat contained and not be rattling all over the place.”
Now, Chris has taken the vape batteries out of the car and replaced them with two Tesla battery modules, but runs it with “special software to fool them into thinking they’re installed in a Tesla Model 3.”
Today, the car is his daily transportation.
“As soon as I get an idea in my head, I’m determined to get it done.”
As an environmentalist who is outraged by the “planned obsolescence”of these disposable vapes, he urges everyone to stop buying the wasteful product which ends up in the landfill within days of purchasing.
Instead, he urges manufacturers to build rechargeable products with long lives that are recyclable to help create a circular economy.
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