Warwickshire engineer powers electric car using disposable vapes

As we reported last year, electric engineer Chris Doel, 27, spent six months stripping the lithium batteries out of 500 binned vapes to create a power-wall battery large enough to run his whole home for eight hours.

But unhappy to stop there, Chris – who wants to raise awareness of the wastefulness of throwing away vapes – decided he wanted to drive an electric car powered with the 2.5 kWh lithium battery.

The first hurdle was finding a car with a low enough power demand to make the project feasible – so he turned to the G-Wiz.

YouTuber Chris, who works for Jaguar Land Rover, said: “I was speaking with a colleague about how I wanted to power a vehicle with [the battery], but because EVs have such enormous batteries, I thought it was never going to be possible.

“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 – so it meant the power-wall would work with it.

“As soon as I get an idea in my head, I’m determined to get it done.”

The 2007-model G-Wiz micro-car, dubbed the ‘Worst Car of the Year’ by Top Gear that same year, has a max speed of 50 mph and seats for two adults and two children.

Show host Jeremy Clarkson previously said of the car: “God has not yet created a creature that would fit in the back.”

But, it only requires a battery with a voltage of 48v – well below a Tesla’s 400v – meaning Chris wouldn’t have to spend potentially years trying to recover enough vape batteries for the project.

Chris spent £800 on the used car, which did not have a functioning battery, from a dealership north of London.

He then got £600 per year business insurance for the vehicle, to ensure he could legally drive it on camera for his YouTube channel.

He said: “I wanted to make sure everything was above board and legal – so I had to get it MOT’d and also sort insurance who were OK with me taking it out with a vape battery pack.

“The person on the phone didn’t really have a clue what I was going on about.

“As I was explaining the full setup and trying to explain I was doing a battery swap they said ‘we don’t really have a lot of options for the mods you are listing online’.

“It cost a decent amount of money, but 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.”

Chris spent five hours a day after work on weekdays and 12 hours a day on weekends for five months re-wiring and sorting out the legal paperwork for the car before he was finally able to take it out for a spin.

He said: “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, if 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.

“I stripped it all down, refurbished it, and put all the insulation back on it, and did that in parallel to the legalities and getting it ready for the MOT.”

In total, the car ran for two hours, covering a distance of 18 miles, entirely powered by vape batteries before finally running out of juice.

Now, Chris has taken the vape batteries out of the car and replaced them with two Tesla battery modules – running with special software to fool the modules into thinking they’re installed in a Tesla Model 3 – and uses it as his daily driver.

It became illegal for businesses in the UK to sell or supply single-use vapes in June last year.

However, waste companies report vapes are still causing rubbish fires despite the ban, with customers treating them as disposable.

Suez, which runs waste management sites, said it had seen over 330 fires caused by exploding batteries in 2025, with the company suspecting the majority were caused by improperly discarded vapes.

Chris added: “[Disposable vapes] are crazy devices that just absolutely shouldn’t exist.

“The problem goes even wider than disposable vapes – they’re just the most outrageous example of it.

“When it comes to the concept of planned obsolescence in general, where manufacturers make devices they know will die sooner than the end of the actual lifespan of the parts, just so you have to buy another one.

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more common.”