Engineer Powers Electric Car With 2,000 Discarded Vapes

Chris Doel just proved that yesterday's trash can become today's transportation. The British engineer powered an electric car using batteries salvaged from 2,000 disposable vapes, turning what would have been landfill waste into a working power source.

The 27-year-old from Warwickshire spent five months on the ambitious project. He collected bags of discarded vapes from a local shop and painstakingly extracted fully rechargeable lithium batteries that most people never realize are inside these throwaway devices.

Chris had already made headlines for building a home battery pack from 500 vape batteries that powered his house for eight hours. But this time, he wanted to go further.

The challenge was finding a car with a small enough battery to match his homemade power pack. He settled on a 2007 G-Wiz, a tiny electric vehicle that Top Gear once called the worst car of the year, paying just £800 for it.

After months of rewiring, building safety enclosures, and sorting legal paperwork, Chris took his vape-powered car on the road. It ran for two hours and covered 18 miles before the batteries needed recharging.

The young engineer, who describes himself as "the engineer equivalent of a mad scientist," documented the entire process on his YouTube channel for 164,000 subscribers. He spent five hours daily after work and 12-hour stretches on weekends making the vision reality.

Safety was a priority given lithium battery risks. Chris secured liability insurance for around $700 for one year, which he considered "incredibly cheap" given the unconventional power source.

The Ripple Effect: Chris's project highlights a hidden environmental crisis. Millions of disposable vapes end up in landfills every year, each containing a perfectly functional rechargeable battery. These devices are designed for obsolescence, lasting just days before disposal despite containing valuable lithium that could power homes or vehicles.

Today, Chris drives the G-Wiz as his daily transportation, though he's since upgraded to Tesla battery modules. The car seats two adults and two small children with a top speed of 50 mph.

His message to consumers is clear: stop buying disposable vapes. He urges manufacturers to build rechargeable, long-lasting products that can be recycled, creating a circular economy instead of endless waste streams.

Chris proves that with creativity and determination, one person can transform thousands of pieces of "trash" into something genuinely useful while exposing wasteful product design.