Popwheels

I’m excited to share Safer Charging, Safer Deliveries: Lessons from NYC DOT’s Public E-Bike Charging Pilot. This evaluation report illustrates the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from our six-month #Ebike Battery Charging Pilot. Looking ahead: ✔️ The New York City Department of Transportation is publishing new rules to allow buildings to install battery charging cabinets on the sidewalk ✔️ NYC DOT is partnering with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to implement a public e-bike charging program at approximately 173 locations, serving NYCHA residents and the general public. This work will be funded by a $25 million federal RAISE grant This report wouldn’t have been possible without the work of some of the most talented individuals in city government: Jill Weidman (whose design brought the report to life!), David Moidel, Seth Contreras, PhD, Mojdeh Azad, Ph.D., Grace Austin, Olivia Szabo, Will Carry, Patrick Smith, Mark Seaman, Will Livingston, Jaclyn Whitney, Angela Moreira-Chavez, Chris Browne, and many others. The pilot’s success also reflects the power of collaboration. A big thank-you to our charging vendors (Popwheels, Swobbee, Swiftmile), agency partners (New York City Fire Department (especially to Alexandra Gjoni) and New York City Economic Development Corporation), Newlab, Meera Kondapi Kumar, the Worker's Justice Project (WJP), the NYC Food Delivery Movement, and the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (especially to Tamara Greenfield and Jerome Wiggins.) We hope this report inspires other municipalities and DOTs to invest in outdoor e-bike #battery #charging infrastructure. To read the full report, please follow the link:

Public e-bike charging offers a safe, efficient option for delivery workers. Delivery workers who participated in our pilot program swapped dead batteries for freshly charged ones 12,000+ times, cutting at-home charging by 35% & improving safety. More: https://bit.ly/3CBKUwF

This was pretty special. I'm a few days late to be able to post this because of the Jewish New Year, but on Thursday the NY Times wrote a great article about the decrease in deaths from eBike fires this year, and put a spotlight on the work we've been doing with the city on that front. They feature the story of Popwheels customer Christian Acajabon, who used to sleep with his window open in case his battery caught fire before he started using us. https://lnkd.in/eiy33MfT

Woohoo! We won the audience vote at the URBAN-X Future Mobility Startup Challenge! First oversized check I've ever gotten -- now just gotta find an oversized ATM to deposit it in.

Great video that highlights the work we’ve been doing over at Popwheels

New FDNY Commissioner, Robert Tucker, was interviewed on WNYC by Matt Katz. He called our battery swap cabinets, a "creative, out of the box solution", that we need more of. https://lnkd.in/eYmk32B5

Great news today! Mayor Adams, in conjunction with the NYC DOT and FDNY, announced a series of city actions aimed at combatting the battery fire crisis. Some of these are big, visible initiatives like a multimillion-dollar trade-in program. But I'm equally thrilled by something much more subtle: NYC DOT announcing that they'll be expediting the approvals process for siting safe charging stations on the sidewalk. This is really nitty-gritty, in-the-weeds stuff -- google "Revocable Consent" if you're a glutton for punishment -- but it makes a huge difference for Popwheels and unlocks our ability to really deploy aggressively and start solving this fire crisis. Much gratitude is due to Mayor Adams, Will Carry Irene Figueroa-Ortiz 🚲 Ya-Ting Liu, Commissioners Rodriguez and Kavanaugh, and a lot of other fine folks who came together to do some smart policymaking. https://lnkd.in/ekcJ8RjM

Popwheels  participated in yesterday’s ‘Pedal Power for the Green Economy' event at the Brooklyn Army Terminal with JOCO, Net Zero Logistics, FLY EBIKE, DutchX, CLIP.BIKE Inc, Lime, Emissionless Mobility and others.   NYC and NYS  are advancing $100 million dollars into building a climate innovation hub at this historic location.  The goal is to grow green technology startups at BAT, part of Mayor Adams’ initiative to create 400,000 green jobs in NYC by 2040.  Public/private partnerships will be the key to the migration of NYC transportation to renewable energy. David Hammer participated in the panel moderated by Jennifer Sun to discuss this topic, with Chris Nolte, Irene Figueroa-Ortiz and Inbar Kishoni. All these new cargo bikes, light electric vehicles, and delivery e-bikes will need safe battery swapping, and after the panel David demonstrated our battery swapping cabinet outside Terminal B, which is one the cabinets up and running in the DOT Studio/ Newlab pilot.    Thanks Aaron Charlop-Powers for arranging everything, and Andrew Kimball, Meera Joshi and Ryan Lynch for their opening remarks, demonstrating NY’s commitment.

NYC's peaker power plants cost us about $500 million annually, cause certain neighborhoods to be referred to as 'asthma alleys' since they burn the dirtiest fuels, while mostly running only during the hottest days of summer. These plants were set to be brought offline already, but NYC's power needs are growing faster than we can implement cleaner sources of energy. As Popwheels rolls out an e-bike battery swap network locally, we are looking at ways we can share power back to the grid to help the city get rid of these plants for good.