The rechargeable lithium batteries in those really doesn't fit the "lithium shortage" and "we don't have enough battery capacity to build an EV for everyone" narrative
It takes around 850g of lithium carbonate to produce one kWh of lithium batteries. The current market price for lithium carbonate is about $14/kg. The base spec Tesla Model 3 has a 57.5kWh battery pack, so the lithium in the pack represents a cost of ~$685, or just under 2% of the list price of the vehicle.
A typical disposable vape contains about five cents worth of lithium.
Another post in this thread mentions 1.8 million disposable vapes being sold per week in Australia. So that corresponds to 131 EV batteries per week. Or roughly 48000 EV batteries per year. 87000 EVs were registered in Australia in 2023.
Make of that what you want, but disposable electronics to administer nicotine seem to be a major waste.
The materials for one EV battery can make ~30 e-bikes, and currently EVs are too expensive for most people.
The way to fix that and the way that industry is fixing it is to make batteries more efficient (higher-density, new anodes/cathodes) in parallel with making a bunch more of them (and mining more lithium).
If we succeed in making a $25k EV, the batteries used in those vapes will be _even cheaper_.
I don’t think it’s desirable and I find the waste appalling, but I do think that disposable batteries can only be expected to grow without intervention.
A popular theory is that they use "QC reject" grade, as the batteries often have arount 800 mAh capacity, two times less than most basic commercial grade.
Hopefully zero! Still, if you replace your car (or its battery) every 10 years (pretty long IMO) and smoke one vape a day (yikes), you'll use more cells on your car than your vapes.
I would hope that too. I imagine that as long as the pack still works, most cars will be sold forward on the used market. If the pack fails (either due to cell death or a crash or whatever), I bet many of them will not be properly recycled, especially from the early days. Once most cars are EVs, recycling will probably get better.
Either way, it seems pretty unfair to assume that EV packs will be 100% recycled, while vape packs will be 0% recycled. One could imagine a sort of "core charge" for disposable vapes. Bring the vape back for recycling when you get a new one and get $2 off. This could even be done by law like California CRV for cans and bottles.
The kind of people who can afford to buy EVs buy a new car what, every 3 years? So I guess about 1/3 of a car (or, using the numbers from another comment, about 4000 vapes' worth).
The lithium in those cheap disposable things are less "lithium" and more "metallic powder/paste that theoretically contains elements of lithium." It's not something you'd want to actually use in anything important like a car battery
Not true. "Disposable" vapes use commodity li-ion cells, of the same basic type that you'd find in a cellphone, a laptop or an EV. They probably aren't the best quality, but there's nothing unusual about the chemistry or packaging. Li-ion cells are the preferred chemistry because of the very high discharge rate - alkaline or primary lithium cells just can't deliver enough current. The cell is perfectly capable of being recharged, but some people prefer the convenience of a disposable device and manufacturers are quite happy to respond to that demand.
It's wasteful, I don't particularly approve of it, I expect to see a lot of jurisdiction ban disposable vapes, but nor do I think it's particularly egregious or meaningfully impacting on the commodity price of lithium carbonate.
some people prefer the convenience of a disposable device
I don't understand this. Instead of plugging it into a charger, they'd rather go to the store to buy another, or more likely order online and wait for it to be delivered?
i don't have personal experience with this, but i imagine so, because if you plug your vape into a charger, you can smoke it in an hour or two, and if you buy a cigarette at the convenience store that's a block away, you can smoke it in two minutes
maybe you live somewhere without convenience stores
I introduced a battery charger to a group of people that used disposable vapes and the knowhow to charge them. It changed the way they interacted with the vapes completely even saying funny high ideas like "we should patent this".
A typical disposable vape contains about five cents worth of lithium.
https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Technical-P...