A UK maker has transformed a collection of discarded disposable vapes into a functional car. Chris Doel, the man behind a number of projects that recycle vape batteries, has recently installed his 500-cell lithium pack in a small electric vehicle and driven it on public roads.

He describes the end result as the world’s only vape-powered automobile. The base vehicle is a Reva G-Wiz, a compact four-seater from the early 2000s that is generally dubbed one of the most unimpressive electric automobiles ever built. It weighs a hefty 400kg without batteries and runs on a very primitive 48volt system, as it originally required heavy lead acid batteries to power its tiny 17 horsepower motor, which could only reach barely more than 50 mph on a good day.

Sale

Anker Laptop Power Bank, 25,000mAh Portable Charger with Triple 100W USB-C Ports, Built-in Retractable…

• Triple 100W USB-C Ports for Multi-Device Charging: Ideal for laptop users, this 25,000mAh power bank features three 100W USB-C ports for simultaneous…
• 25,000mAh for Long-Haul Power: Tackle week-long trips or extended camping with 25,000mAh capacity and ultra-fast recharging, reaching 30% in just…
• Dual Built-In Cables for Travel: Features two USB-C cables, one extendable up to 2.3 ft with 20,000 retractions, and another at 0.98 ft cable that…

Doel already had the battery pack figured out; he’d taken 500 discarded vapes, ensured that each and every cell was still functional, and assembled them all in 14 little modules connected in series to achieve roughly 50 volts. On paper, that yields approximately 2.5 kilowatt hours, but in fact it is closer to 2.1. The same battery had previously powered his workshop’s tools and lights.

Mounting the lot was a little difficult because he had to fabricate an aluminum box to keep everything in place, add some extra insulation, and regulate the vibrations with thermal pads, foam padding, and silicone dampening. A clever battery management system keeps track of the voltages and currents for each individual cell, and individual fuses keep things from turning pear-shaped. There’s also a temperature probe that sounds a small bell when things get too heated. There is Kapton tape and other safety measures in place to ensure that it does not catch fire. The complete unit bolts nicely into the back seat area, replacing the old lead acids.

Electronics were simple enough, as the G-Wiz just utilizes a contactor to switch electricity to an inverter, which operates the motor with three phase AC. Doel simply added a circuit breaker, reprogrammed the inverter to limit the output slightly, and swapped in a DC-DC converter for the 12volt components such as headlights / wipers, and since charging must be done slowly, he simply used a USB-C adapter plugged into a small 138W laptop charger.

So, what happened on the road? Well, it moved. Initial tests indicated it could travel both forwards and backwards, and a proper drive revealed it was pulling approximately 160 amps at 15 mph, reducing to 90-100 amps at 30-35 mph on flat ground. Hills pushed 130-150 amps, but regenerative braking returned roughly 10 amps, keeping the pack nice and cool, peaking at 29°C. On a casual run that included some shopping and fast food, the range was 17-18 miles. Voltage sag from unequal cells eventually caused a cutoff, but no big crisis happened.

Doel purposefully capped the power so it wouldn’t be able to draw too much, as the car can actually handle a lot more current than it was drawing, but by limiting draw to about 120 amps, he was able to avoid blowing any fuses and giving the old recycled cells some breathing room.
[Source]

[Diffraction Limited] has been working on a largely 3D-printed micropositioner for some time now, and previously reached a resolution of about 50 nanometers. There was still room for improvement, though, and his latest iteration improves the linkage arms by embossing tiny ball joints into them.

The micro-manipulator, which we’ve covered before, uses three sets of parallel rod linkages to move a platform. Each end of each rod rotates on a ball joint. In the previous iteration, the parallel rods were made out of hollow brass tubing with internal chamfers on the ends. The small area of contact between the ball and socket created unnecessary friction, and being hollow made the rods less stiff. [Diffraction Limited] wanted to create spherical ball joints, which could retain more lubricant and distribute force more evenly.

The first step was to cut six lengths of solid two-millimeter brass rod and sand them to equal lengths, then chamfer them with a 3D-printed jig and a utility knife blade. Next, they made two centering sleeves to hold small ball bearings at the ends of the rod being worked on, while an anti-buckling sleeve surrounded the rest of the rod. The whole assembly went between the jaws of a pair of digital calipers, which were zeroed. When one of the jaws was tapped with a hammer, the ball bearings pressed into the ends of the brass rod, creating divots. Since the calipers measured the amount of indentation created, they was able to emboss all six rods equally. The mechanism is designed not to transfer force into the calipers, but he still recommends using a dedicated pair.

In testing, the new ball joints had about a tenth the friction of the old joints. They also switched out the original 3D-printed ball mount for one made out of a circuit board, which was more rigid and precisely manufactured. In the final part of the video, he created an admittedly unnecessary, but useful and fun machine to automatically emboss ball joints with a linear rail, stepper motor, and position sensor.

On such a small scale, a physical ball joint is clearly simpler, but on larger scales it’s also possible to make flexures that mimic a ball joint’s behavior.

Today, Apple announced its new budget MacBook. At $599, it looks seriously impressive. While I haven’t tested its performance, battery life, or display just yet, it may end up being hard to beat at that price based on some of the specs alone.

But that doesn’t mean the competition isn’t there. I want to recommend a couple of Windows laptops deals that offer various advantages over the MacBook Neo, showing where the Neo has both strengths and weaknesses.

First, check out this Asus Vivobook 14, a laptop I’ve been happy to recommend as a budget computer for the past year. In many ways, this is the Windows version of a laptop like the MacBook Neo. It uses a highly-efficient ARM chip, the Qualcomm Snapdragon X, meaning it gets great battery life and performs admirably in daily tasks. It’s not quite as thin or light as the MacBook Neo, but it’s fairly portable for a laptop at this price.

Asus

Vivobook 14 (X1407QA)

Advertisement

Unlike the MacBook Neo, the Vivobook 14 comes with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. That’s twice what you get in the MacBook Neo’s starting configuration. Right now, this configuration of the Vivobook 14 is on sale for $539. That’s a killer deal for those specs. It even comes with a healthier mix of ports, including HDMI, two USB-A, one USB-C, and a headphone jack. That also means it can support two external displays unlike the MacBook Neo, which can only handle just one.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not at all saying the Vivobook 14 is a slam dunk over the MacBook Neo. Based on specs alone, I know the Vivobook 14 is a serious step down when it comes to the display. It’s less sharp, stretched across a larger screen, and the color performance isn’t so good. The Vivobook 14 maxes out at 280 nits, whereas Apple says the MacBook Neo can go all the way up to 500 nits. I have a hunch that the MacBook Neo will deliver a much better display in just about every regard.

There’s also the touchpad. It’s a little clunky to use, which is typical of budget Windows laptops. This is just a guess—but the touchpad on the MacBook Neo will likely feel smoother. It’s a mechanical trackpad (unlike the MacBook Air’s haptic feedback trackpad), but Apple has almost never made a bad trackpad.

If you’re not convinced by the Asus Vivobook 14, I’d also recommend the HP OmniBook 5, which is currently on sale for $500 and uses the same Snapdragon X chip. While it only has 256 GB of storage, it has a much better screen than the Vivobook 14, using an OLED display. It’s not any brighter than the Vivobook 14, but it gives you far better color performance and contrast. It’s also just 0.50 inches thick, matching the MacBook Neo exactly in portability.

Amid the plans to grow its headcount worldwide, Whoop will also expand its Limerick-based office.

Whoop, the human performance platform with Irish investors that include Rory McIlroy, Niall Horan and Shane Lowry, plans to increase its global headcount by hiring more than 600 new employees. 

While new roles will be located primarily at the Boston, US headquarters, there will also be job opportunities in Limerick, with global roles set to be made available across software, research and design, hardware, product and marketing. According to Whoop, the expansion of its teams “reflects a clear strategic priority”. 

Whoop was established in 2012 by its current CEO Will Ahmed. The company offers a fitness tracker and wearable membership that enables people to keep track of areas of their lives such as sleep quality, health and fitness.

Commenting on the announcement, Ahmed said: “Right now, companies are debating whether to hire more people or just invest in AI. We are doing both. 

“We are doubling down on exceptional talent and doubling down on world-class AI tools because the combination is what wins. Health monitoring is becoming one of the most important platforms in the world and WHOOP intends to own the category.”

Wearable devices are becoming a booming industry globally, with a range of organisations looking to capitalise on their popularity. In January of this year, Galway neurotech Segotia, which specialises in hearables, announced it had been acquired by US-based sleep technology company Ozlo. 

In August of 2025, Sports Impact Technologies revealed it had raised €650,000 in a pre-seed round. The company said that the funds would be used to roll out a beta model of its compact, behind-the-ear wearable that aims to detect the severity of a head impact in real time and determine the likelihood of a concussion. 

The Irish start-up was established in 2022 by Eóin Tuohy and is headquartered at NovaUCD in Dublin. The funding was led by private investors, with the support of Enterprise Ireland’s High-Potential Start-Up initiative.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Learn Raspberry Pi and start building Amazon Alexa projects with The Complete Raspberry Pi and Alexa A-Z Bundle. Catered for all levels, these project-based courses will get you up and running with the basics of Pi, before escalating to full projects. Before you know it, you’ll be building a gaming system to play old Nintendo, Sega, and PlayStation games and a personal digital assistant using the Google Assistant API. You will also learn how to build Alexa Skills that will run on any Amazon Echo device to voice control anything in your home, and how to build your own Echo clone. The bundle is on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference in downtown San Francisco Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said his company’s recent investments in OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to be its last in both, saying that once they go public as anticipated later this year, the opportunity to invest closes.

It could be that simple. While firms sometimes pile into companies until practically the eve of their public debut in search of more upside, Nvidia is minting money selling the chips that power both companies — it’s not like it needs to goose its returns by pouring even more money into either one.

Nvidia, for its part, isn’t offering much elaboration. Asked for comment earlier today following Huang’s remarks, a spokesman pointed TechCrunch to a transcript from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, where Huang said all of Nvidia’s investments are “focused very squarely, strategically on expanding and deepening our ecosystem reach,” a goal its earlier stakes in both companies have arguably met.

Still, a few other dynamics might also explain the pullback, including the circular nature of these arrangements themselves, which have raised questions about a potential bubble. When Nvidia first announced it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI last September, MIT Sloan professor Michael Cusumano blandly described it to the Financial Times as “kind of a wash,” observing that “Nvidia is investing $100 billion in OpenAI stock, and OpenAI is saying they are going to buy $100 billion or more of Nvidia chips.”

That could explain why the commitment shrank. The investment Nvidia finalized just last week as part of OpenAI’s $110 billion round came in at $30 billion — well short of that earlier pledge. If there is more to the story, Huang isn’t saying, having dismissed suggestions of bad blood between the two companies as “nonsense.”

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s relationship with Anthropic has looked fraught in its own right. Just two months after Nvidia announced a $10 billion investment in November, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took the stage at Davos and, without naming Nvidia directly, compared the act of U.S. chip companies selling high-performance AI processors to approved Chinese customers to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.” (Ouch.)

In retrospect, a nuclear weapons comparison was the least of it. Just days before Huang appeared at the banking conference, the Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic, barring federal agencies and military contractors from using its tech after the company refused to allow its models to be used for autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

Within hours of that announcement, OpenAI struck its own deal with the Pentagon — a move Anthropic has called “mendacious” and the public appears to have viewed similarly. Within 24 hours, Claude had shot to the top of Apple’s U.S. App Store, overtaking ChatGPT. (At the end of January, Anthropic was outside the top 100, according to Sensor Tower data.)

Where that leaves Nvidia is holding stakes in two companies that, at this particular moment, are pulling in very different directions, and potentially dragging customers and partners along for the ride.

Whether Huang saw any of this coming, given Nvidia’s web of partnerships, is impossible to know. But his stated reason on Wednesday for likely pulling the plug on future investments — that the IPO window closes the door on this kind of deal — is hard to square with how late-stage private investing actually works. What’s looking more probable is that this is an exit from a situation that has gotten really complicated, really fast.