NYC piloting silent, electric batteries for food carts around Queens park

Published Jul 11, 2026 at 8:00 a.m. ET

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Apolline Lamy / Gothamist

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Flushing Meadows-Corona Park is getting just a little bit quieter.

Starting this week, city officials and partners have outfitted two street vendors’ food carts with electric batteries. They’re replacing the sort of gas-guzzling generators that officials and vendors say make carts unbearably hot and noisy while spewing exhaust into the air. They’re calling the six-month pilot the NYC Clean-Powered Carts Challenge, with plans to expand to another eight participating vendors in the coming weeks.

PopWheels, a Brooklyn-based start-up that provides battery-swapping cabinets for e-bikes, has set up two cabinets inside the park where the vendors can drop off spent batteries and pick up charged replacements. Nonprofit Resilient Cities Catalyst is providing $28,000, and the Mayor's Fund another $46,000 to the City Parks Foundation to run the pilot, with no cost to the vendors.

City officials say the pilot is a proof of concept that could demonstrate how, with battery power, food carts can be quieter, safer for their operators and better for the environment. Louise Yeung, chief climate officer for the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, said during a rollout Tuesday that the initiative is part of the city’s overall effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to an Immigration Research Initiative report cited by the climate office, there are an estimated 20,500 mobile food vendors throughout the city — and 96% are immigrants. The office also cited a 2025 report from advocacy group the Street Vendor Project, one of the other partners on the pilot, that found 97% use diesel generators .

“If we electrify every food vending part in NYC, we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 120,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of taking 30,000 cars off the road each year,” she said.

The Street Vendor Project report also found food cart vendors were chronically exposed to poor air quality due to the generator emissions. Most of the vendors the project surveyed said they’d be interested in alternative power sources, but weren’t familiar with options. The group sees batteries as a feasible short-term solution while advocating for the more ambitious and expensive goal of connections to the grid in the long-term.

A cabinet with three batteries powers William Arevalo's cart.

Andrew Conca-Cheng, a program manager for the Street Vendor Project, told Gothamist that the group tried an electric battery pilot of its own in 2024, but found vendors struggled with capacity issues — batteries wouldn’t last all day, or the vendors couldn’t easily recharge batteries overnight.

In the current pilot, the city and its partners aim to solve that problem by making it easier for vendors to use multiple batteries, and swap them out as needed. PopWheels plans to deliver the batteries throughout the day as needed to vendors operating outside of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, including at nearby Corona Plaza.

Ben Rosenn, director of deployments at PopWheels, said if the program were to expand broadly in the future, it could work similarly to Popwheels’ current offering for e-bikes. Delivery workers pay $75 to $95 per month for access to a network of cabinets where they can swap used batteries for charged ones.

Rosenn said the price for the street vendors would be different, as one delivery worker only needs one battery at a time, while street vendors may need multiple at once for a single day’s operation.

But Rosenn said subscribing to the electric battery service should still prove more affordable than buying a gasoline generator, avoiding the high upfront cost.

Conca-Cheng, from the Street Vendor Project, noted to Gothamist the batteries may not be viable alternatives for all vendors. His group has studied vendors' energy needs over the last few years. An ice cream truck, he said, may not be able to use batteries because of the high power draw needed for refrigeration.

William Arevalo is one of the first two food cart owners participating in the program, using three batteries for WCM’s Fast Food, where he serves up empanadas, hot dogs and chicken wings. At a rollout for the program with city officials Tuesday, he cooked his Ecuadorian-style salchipapas, with French fries and hot dogs, without any noise. He said it’s a very different experience from using his generator.

“The smoke goes inside and is the number one problem, and it’s no good for the health,” he said. “We work 12 hours to 14 hours a day, and the [generator] makes too much noise and we cannot hear the customers.”

With his generator, he said, he has to spend $15 to $20 a day on gasoline, and change the oil weekly — none of which would be necessary with an electric battery. Rosenn said the three batteries Arevalo uses could last for the entire day before being changed out from one of the two cabinets in the park.

“We’re very happy, right now it’s working, you don’t hear nothing,” Arevalo said.

It’s often hotter inside the carts than outside — which is amplified on extreme heat days. During last weekend’s heat wave, Resilient Cities Catalyst and the Street Vendor Project distributed water and electrolytes, cooling towels and umbrellas to New York City's vendors.

Anna Friedman, director for policy and programs at Resilient Cities Catalyst, said street vendors are at the frontline of climate change. Her organization works on economic, social and climate planning around the world. It’s helped design kiosks for street vendors in India, and help provide better access to water and shade for street vendors in Mexico City.

“Street vendors are really feeling extreme heat and air pollution as a result of the traditional generators. The inside of these carts gets so hot on hot days and then it’s compounded by the exhaust that is coming out of the generator, they’re getting the air pollution and then they’re cooking as well,” she said.

The effort comes as city officials are stepping up their outreach to street vendors, the majority of whom currently operate without licenses. In January, the City Council passed a bill to expand the amount of licenses available for the first time in decades. In March, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams created a new Office of Street Vendor Services within the Department of Small Business Services.

“As we’re thinking about what the expansion of the industry can look like, [a] pilot program like this can help play a key role to ensure that the expansion of the industry is meeting climate goals,” said Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, executive director of the Office of Street Vendor Services.

Apolline Lamy is a reporting intern on the Day-of Desk. She is studying for her master's degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

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