SANTA CLARA, June 19 — There is a new sight on the streets of Havana: increasing numbers of electric vehicles whizzing among the old American cars so emblematic of the Cuban capital.
Gonzalez has abandoned his old, combustion-engine car — one of about 600,000 registered on the island of 11.2 million people, according to official data.By far the majority of cars in circulation in Cuba are American models from the 1950s — before sanctions started — and compact Ladas from the Soviet era.
Also increasingly popular are electric motorbikes — of which there are an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 in Cuba — and three-wheelers all the more frequently seen dragging a carriage full of passengers or goods.In a once-abandoned Soviet-era truck factory in the central city of Santa Clara, about 100 workers of the company Minerva assemble electric vehicles with parts imported from China or Vietnam.
Half of buses are out of service for a lack of tires and batteries that cannot be imported due to US sanctions, said transport ministry official Guillermo Gonzalez.At the same time, fuel shortages have worsened since the US reinforced its six-decade-old economic blockade of the communist island in 2019, preventing the arrival of fuel tankers from Venezuela, a Cuban ally.
And in a bid to make up some of the shortage, the authorities have turned to generators that use up much of the limited diesel stock.
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