How PopWheels powered food cart generators for electric bike batteries

Food carts are a staple of New York City dining, serving up everything from dosas and doner kebabs to hot dogs and dim sum. But no matter how enticing the cart’s food smells, the gas generators that power the lights threaten to stop them from eating.

Cart owners and customers may not have to inhale the fumes for long. A Brooklyn-based startup is experimenting with using its e-bike batteries to power food carts, starting with La Chona Mexico on the 30th corner.^Th and Broadway in Manhattan.

“This really started as a lark last summer,” said David Hammer, co-founder and CEO of PopWheelshe told TechCrunch. “I’m a long-time Google user, and this just seemed old-fashioned, old-fashioned 20% project.”

Most of the time, PopWheels battery packs travel around the city attached to food delivery bikes. The group soon realized that connecting them to food carts was the right way to go.

“Are e-bike packs the best way to power a car? Maybe, maybe not,” Hammer said. “I’d say it doesn’t matter. What’s the point, can you stop dividing and charging?”

PopWheels currently operates 30 cabs around Manhattan, serving gig workers riding e-bikes, many of whom use the Arrow or Whiz models. This has led to a “de facto decentralized fleet,” Hammer said, allowing the company to keep multiple types of batteries to serve hundreds of customers.

Many truckers commute to Manhattan from outlying parts of the city. It’s a trip that can burn a large portion of their bill, and most workers need two batteries to get through the day. In response, bodegas began offering e-bike charging services, for which delivery workers pay $100 a month. When you use a battery and tear it down, the total costs approach $2,000 a year, Hammer said.

“We can make the economy work so we’re saving them money that will help them,” he said. PopWheels charges customers $75 a month for unlimited Internet access, and Hammer said the company has a long waiting list.

Basic charging cabinets can hold up to 16 batteries, and PopWheels designed them to put out a battery fire if anything goes wrong with charging. (The purpose of starting the company was to eliminate E-bike fire in New York City(which became a big problem a few years ago.) After building the first cabinets, the company secured $2.3 million worth of seeds last year by 2025.

The changing area is usually a small open space like a parking lot, where PopWheels have the fences and electrical connections necessary to support multiple cabinets. Each cabinet draws as much electricity as a Level 2 electric car charger, which isn’t saying much.

As PopWheels’ e-bike business grew, the founders began learning about other opportunities.

“There’s always a little sense that there’s something bigger here,” Hammer said. “When you build a city battery swap, fireproof, you’re creating a place where more people will want to ride.”

Hammer started thinking about other ways to use batteries after someone posted an article about how New York City was working to remove air from food carts. That’s when the PopWheels team started running the numbers.

Food trucks, Hammer estimates, probably spend $10 a day on fuel to power their generators. (Most cooking is done via propane, which is a different story.) That’s how PopWheels can pay someone to subscribe to its four batteries a day. Conveniently, its four batteries can provide about five kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is enough to cover the end of what the trailer can pull. If they want more water, Hammer said they can run to the switch during the day.

After figuring out the math involved, PopWheels built a similar adapter and tested it at a small event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during New York Climate Week last year. Since then, the startup has been working with the Street Vendor Project to develop the concept. Last week’s show with La Chona was the first time the batteries would run a food cart for a full day.

“I had a lot of food truck owners come up to me and say, ‘Wait, there’s no noise with this cart. What are you guys doing? Can I have this?’ Hammer said.

“We plan to roll this out in full force starting this summer,” he said. “We think we can be neutral with gasoline for the food cart owner and solve all of life’s problems.”