Technology

59378 readers

3611 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

816

Guy makes “dodgy e-bike” from 130 used vapes to make point about e-waste (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

101 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 week ago (14 children)

I’m not a vape user, but the model is the kind of thing that just makes me so angry.

In a world that makes sense:

small, mostly metal vape chassis
rechargeable, replaceable battery
built-in glass reservoir with charging valve
vape juice sold in medium to large recyclable cans with standard interface to the charging valve

In a world where Profit is God (the real world):

disposable chassis
disposable battery
if it’s refillable at all, it’s via non-recyclable, mixed material, mostly plastic, proprietary cartridges and you can save 5% if you subscribe online for refills, 10% if you pay yearly, $5 credit if you refer a friend on social media using hashtag #smoovape
probably gives you turbo cancer because the juice is made in a repurposed Freon plant that was inadequately converted and they just don’t answer the phone when the FDA or EPA call

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (5 children)

We used to have a great vape market for those types of vapes. Since 2020 state and fed government has rinsed the market “for the kids” and basically created what we see now, a market of 98% disposable sold by overseas companies. Before that there were countless brands making batteries, tanks, etc. now a lot of smoke shops don’t even sell refillable vapes or liquid.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

... What? I used to smoke a pack a day, now I just vape. I've never seen a smoke shop that doesn't sell juice

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Different legislation in different places. My country banned flavours, but they still sell disposables somehow.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (11 replies)