How PopWheels helped a food cart ditch generators for e-bike batteries

How PopWheels helped a food cart ditch generators for e-bike batteries

Food carts are a staple of New York City eating, dishing out all the pieces from dosa and doner kebabs to canines and dim sum in brief order. But regardless of how engaging the aroma of a cart’s food, the smelly fuel generators that preserve the lights on threaten to place prospects off their meals.

Cart homeowners and prospects could not need to suck on fumes for much longer. A Brooklyn-based startup is testing the use of its e-bike batteries to energy food carts, beginning with La Chona Mexican on the nook of thirtieth and Broadway in Manhattan.

“This really started out as a lark last summer,” David Hammer, co-founder and CEO of PopWheels, told TechCrunch. “I’m an ex-Googler from the early days, and this felt like a classic, old-school 20% project.”

Normally, PopWheels battery packs are zipping round the metropolis strapped to food supply bikes. The team soon realized that connecting them to food carts was an avenue price pursuing.

“Are e-bike packs the perfect energy type to be powering food carts? Maybe, maybe not,” Hammer said. “I would argue it doesn’t matter. What matters is, can you solve distribution and charging?”

If a food cart wants more energy, the proprietor can swap the battery packs noon.Image Credits:PopWheels

PopWheels at the moment operates 30 charging cupboards round Manhattan, which serve gig employees using e-bikes, most of whom use both Arrow or Whizz fashions. That’s resulted in a “de facto  decentralized fleet,” Hammer said, permitting the company to inventory just a few different kinds of batteries to serve tons of of consumers.

Many supply employees trip into Manhattan from the farther reaches of the metropolis. It’s a journey that can burn a significant slice of their cost, and many employees want two batteries to get by way of a full day. In response, bodegas began providing e-bike charging providers, for which supply employees sometimes pay $100 per thirty days. When factoring in battery put on and tear, the complete price nears $2,000 per 12 months, Hammer said.

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“We can make the economics work so that we’re actually saving them money right off the bat,” he said. PopWheels costs prospects $75 per thirty days for limitless entry to its network, and Hammer said the company has a lengthy waitlist.

The startup’s charging cupboards can maintain 16 batteries, and PopWheels designed them to swiftly extinguish a battery hearth ought to something go awry during charging. (The company’s founding mission was to stamp out e-bike fires in New York City, which grew to become a vital drawback few years in the past.) After constructing some preliminary cupboards, the company raised a $2.3 million seed round last 12 months 2025.

Swap websites are sometimes small open areas like parking tons, which PopWheels has retrofit with fences and the mandatory electrical connections to assist a number of cupboards. Each cupboard attracts about as a lot electrical energy as a Level 2 electrical car charger, which is to say not that a lot.

As PopWheels e-bike service grew, the startup started learning other alternatives. 

“There was always a little bit of an underlying thesis that there’s something bigger here,” Hammer said. “If you build urban-scale, fire-safe battery swapping infrastructure, you’re creating an infrastructure layer that lots of people are going to want to get on board with.”

Hammer began to suppose about various makes use of for the batteries after somebody despatched an article about how New York City was working to decarbonize food carts. That’s when the PopWheels team began operating the numbers.

Food carts, Hammer estimates, most likely spend round $10 a day on fuel for their generators to maintain the lights on. (Most of the cooking is completed through propane, which is a separate matter.) That’s about how a lot PopWheels would cost somebody to subscribe to 4 of its batteries per day. Conveniently, 4 of its batteries can provide about 5 kilowatt-hours of electrical energy, which is sufficient to cowl the low end of what a typical cart may draw. If they want more juice, Hammer said they’ll run to a swap station noon.

After realizing the math penciled out, PopWheels constructed a prototype adapter and trialed it at a small event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard at last 12 months’s New York Climate Week. Since then, the startup has been working with the the non-profit Street Vendor Project to maneuver the thought ahead. Last week’s demonstration with La Chona was the first time the batteries powered a food cart for a full day. 

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

“We are planning to roll this out aggressively starting this summer,” he said. “We think we could be cost neutral with gasoline for a food cart owner while solving all of the quality of life issues.”

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