Man Powers Scooter With Used Vape Batteries

A clever 23 year old graduate says disposable vape devices are marketed as expendable, but still have plenty of power—and people need to know that. He used 80 discarded vape batteries to power his e-scooter—and to make a point about waste. He purchased the scooter on eBay for $37 and the discarded vape batteries were free.

Tobiasz Stanford from Wiltshire now uses the e-scooter everyday and calls it very reliable. “It can go up any hill, has been used in rain, and has been driven through puddles. The only downfall is that it’s quite noisy but other than that the performance is crazy. These vape batteries are very active still, yet they’re marketed as disposable. It needs to stop” he said.

Stanford has always had a fascination with electronics and moving parts and his curiosity was piqued when he saw his friend smoking a vape and wondered how it worked. He researched different types of vapes and found some could be recharged and reused five times before the vape liquid ran out. After taking them apart, he discovered they used a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

He began recharging the batteries and found after one cycle they could function “almost like a brand new battery”—and decided to try powering a scooter with them. The one he bought on eBay didn’t have good range and could only go 10 mph. “I had to be careful wiring up the batteries but now the scooter works better with the vape batteries than it did before. It goes up to 15 mph, can go up any hill, and can charge in about three hours. Once it’s fully charged I go around six miles everyday on it.”

Tobiasz says people are “wowed” when he tells them the small scooter is powered completely by disposable vape batteries. “Everyone’s quite surprised. My family and friends are completely shocked when they see what I’ve done. It’s a very small scooter and most people can’t even tell it’s even powered – never mind powered by vapes.”

Tobiasz says he wants others to know that disposable vapes can in fact be reused and believes there needs to be more restrictions on the reuse of disposable vapes—especially because if they’re dumped in a landfill the chemicals would eventually leach out. “We need to think about ‘e waste’ with greater importance. These batteries are very active still” he said.