Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones.
To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger “3,500 puff” types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.
I so so want to purchase an ebike.But the companies don’t seem likely to stick around for long though.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. The bikes are very simple and the battery pack can be rebuilt. Any decent bike shop should be able to repair an orphaned e-bike.
Most will not repair an ebikes outside of the brand they sell. I’d ask the shop first.
Perhaps where you live. I recently helped a young man get an e-bike, (somewhat mentally handicapped-- we raised funds to purchase the bike to get him to have better mobility), We got him an Aventon Cargo bike. The local bike shop plainly stated they would work on any e-bike you brought in. And that that all of the area bike shops were the same.
One does not turn away a paying customer.
I see your point, but I also saw Juiced Bikes go out of business last month after 15 years in the industry.
You pretty much should only buy one from a shop that has a physical location near you and can do repairs. Like everybody around me sells Trek, so if I ever got one, it’d be a Trek with a Bosch motor. Bike shops will not repair ebikes they don’t sell, even though they’ll repair regular bikes. And neither Trek nor Bosch are going anywhere.
So? As long as they deliver the ebike, what do you care about the financial health of the company after that?
Proprietary spare parts. The motors might be off the shelf so you could grab parts from a different manufacturer. But controllers and batteries are usually proprietary making repairs much more complicated and cost-inefficient
Support. Warranties. Replacement parts.
Damn, this warranty is still in effect for a few more weeks, and the company’s gone…