Walk around New York and you’re sure to hear the hum of gasoline generators powering the city’s tens of thousands of food carts. But not William Arevalo’s.
His truck, which sells hot dogs, empanadas and fried shrimp, runs on rechargeable batteries as part of a city pilot aimed at reducing harmful noise and air pollution by harnessing electricity.
“I can’t believe it. Now we have no noise and all our equipment is still working,” Arevalo, 59, told AFP from his food cart parked under the shade of trees in a Queens park.
Arevalo is one of 10 street vendors testing whether they can ditch gasoline generators to reduce noise, planet-warming emissions and health risks caused by exhaust fumes.
It’s a mammoth task: The vast majority of the city’s 20,500 licensed food carts — selling pretzels, peanuts and ice cream — rely on generators to power stoves, freezers and fans.
Switching them all to electricity would be the same as taking around 30,000 cars off the road a year, according to the city council, but the costs and infrastructure challenges lie ahead.
Arevalo, who is originally from Ecuador and whose family has run the food truck for more than 20 years, has noticed some benefits since switching to his gasoline generator.
“All the smoke from the generator was coming inside the truck. It’s really bad for our health. And sometimes when I was with a customer, I couldn’t hear them because of the noise of the generator,” he said.
“It’s 100 percent better now,” Arevalo added from inside the cart, where several two-dollar bills are taped to a wall — luckily, he explained.
And on a hot July day, he said batteries were much more reliable than fuel-burning generators that can overheat and cut out in the summer.
– ‘Surprised’ –
On the back of Arevalo’s cart — emblazoned all over with colorful photos of the menu of chicken wings and coconut juice — is an inverter that holds up to six foot-long batteries.
He said they provide enough power to keep the chips frozen and the fans spinning as long as they are turned off every five hours or so.
The six-month pilot began in July and uses the same batteries as many electric bikes. PopWheels, a New York startup, supplies and loads them into cabinets near the fireplace.
Similar trials have been short-lived in the past.
In 2013, New York connected some Manhattan streetcars to the city’s electrical grid—it reduced emissions and noise, but there was no way to increase it.
And a pilot by the nonprofit Street Vendor Project put similar batteries in food trucks, but the lack of charging infrastructure proved a problem.
This time will be different, the council hopes, as it envisages a subscription-based model where retailers pay a fee to access batteries and charging stations.
“We think it will be cost-competitive, either less than what retailers pay now or about the same as what retailers pay for gas,” said Isabela Brown, senior policy adviser in the mayor’s office on climate.
For the vendors, “the main cost … will be installing an inverter system. We’re looking at financing solutions, loans, other things the city can offer,” she added.
Inverter systems can cost thousands of dollars — not unlike gasoline generators depending on size — but proponents say running costs are lower in the long run.
For now, Arevalo is content to show off his electric cart on the road to other vendors who rely on gasoline generators.
“I show my friends and they are surprised. Everything is working, really everything is working,” he smiled.
