His truck, selling hot dogs, empanadas and fried shrimp, runs on rechargeable batteries as part of a city pilot aimed at cutting harmful noise and air pollution by harnessing electric energy."I can't believe it. Now we don't have 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 petrol generators to reduce noise, planet-warming emissions and health risks posed 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 ventilators. Shifting all of them to electric power would be the same as taking around 30,000 cars off the road annually, according to the city council, but costs and infrastructure challenges lie ahead. Arevalo, who is originally from Ecuador and whose family has run the food truck for over 20 years, has noticed several benefits after swapping out his petrol generator."All the smoke from the generator used to come 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 generator noise," he said. "Now it's 100 percent better," Arevalo added from inside the cart, where several two-dollar bills are taped to a wall -- for good luck, he explained. And on a hot July day, he said the batteries were far more reliable than fuel generators that can overheat and cut out during summer.'Surprised'