The Future of Transportation Has Arrived With Your Pad Thai
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2024
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Baruch Herzfeld is the CEO and co-founder of PopWheels, where he is working to develop New York City’s first e-bike battery-swapping network. PopWheels aims to solve the growing problem of e-bike battery fires. The company believes that giving e-mobility users a quick, convenient, and safe way to recharge their batteries is absolutely essential to pushing gas-burning cars and trucks out of cities once and for all. But Baruch’s really big idea is this: He is betting that the light, clean, electric transportation fleet of the future is already up and running on the streets of New York City. And it isn’t being brought to us by Big Tech, Big Auto or Elon Musk, it is being driven by tens of thousands of immigrant e-bike delivery workers. What if there is a high-tech urban mobility revolution happening right under our noses, but we can’t see it because the people who are bringing it to our city are mostly invisible to us?
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LINKS:
Baruch Herzfeld’s battery-swapping company, PopWheels: Stop Charging, Start Swapping
Mayor Adams Launches Lithium-ion Battery-Charging Pilot for Delivery Workers to Safely Charge in Public, NYC.gov, December 5, 2023
When will NYC do something about e-bike fire deaths? Nicole Gelinas for the New York Post, November 19, 2023
F.D.N.Y. Commissioner Blames E-Commerce Giants in Deadly Battery Fires, by Michael Rothfeld for the New York Times, November 13, 2023
E-bike charging stations coming to NYCHA in wake of deadly lithium-ion battery fires, New York Daily News, June 25, 2023
Opinion: E-bike Battery Regulation Isn’t Anti-immigrant or Anti-worker. It’s Common Sense. By Baruch Herzfeld in City Limits, November 14, 2022
Brooklyn’s Bicycle Man Uses Two Wheels To Bring Hasids and Hipsters Together, by Nathaniel Popper for The Forward, August 29, 2009
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This episode was reported, produced and edited by Aaron Naparstek. Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I used to follow the battery fires in New York City. I had an alert, you know, and it was just too much. |
| 0:06.0 | You know, there's a fire every day that's in a building. There's also fires on the street that nobody talks about, you know, |
| 0:12.0 | assume there's going to be, assume there's going to be |
| 0:14.2 | multiple fires in New York City today. Assume that one of them is going to be |
| 0:18.0 | inside of a building. And the one that happened last night in the Bronx 50 people became homeless. |
| 0:25.4 | They blame the landlord. |
| 0:26.8 | The landlord has some violations, but the city is not built for this. |
| 0:31.8 | The city, people are dying. People are becoming homeless. |
| 0:40.0 | Welcome to the War on Cars. I'm Aaron Napersdack. |
| 0:44.0 | E-bikes and micro-mobility have been one of the real bright spots in the war on cars over the last few years. |
| 0:51.0 | Suddenly, we have this whole new class of vehicles that are lighter |
| 0:55.1 | cleaner and cheaper than cars and trucks and for the most part they're much |
| 0:59.5 | safer too. But we're learning that there's one big problem with a city full of barely regulated |
| 1:07.2 | battery-powered personal transportation. |
| 1:10.4 | E-Bike Battery Fires |
| 1:18.0 | 2023 was a record-setting year for fire fatalities in New York City. Over 100 people were killed in building fires, |
| 1:22.0 | more than double the number of fire deaths |
| 1:25.1 | from just a few years ago. Baruch Herzfeld is the CEO and co-founder of |
| 1:30.6 | Pop Wheels and he believes that he and his company have the solution to the |
| 1:35.9 | e-bike battery fire problem and so much more. Pop Wheels is developing New York City's first e-mobility battery swapping network. |
| 1:47.0 | Just as gas stations were key to making cars and trucks the dominant transportation mode of the 20th century, Baruch believes that battery |
| 1:55.4 | swapping is the key to making e-mobility the dominant mode of this century. |
... |
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