Media narratives about Cuba are predictably lazy. When journalists see Cubans riding Chinese-made electric tricycles or pedaling bicycles through the streets of Havana, they immediately reach for one of two tired scripts. Script A: Cubans are bravely adapting to crushing US sanctions with ingenious, eco-friendly grassroots transit. Script B: The Cuban socialist model is failing so spectacularly that the population has been reduced to 19th-century mobility.
Both narratives are wrong. They miss the brutal economic reality on the ground.
I have spent years analyzing emerging markets and supply chain disruptions. I have seen governments throw billions at "green transitions" only to create massive deadweight losses. What is happening in Cuba is not a romanticized push for green mobility, nor is it a simple protest against the US embargo. It is a desperate, hyper-rational response to a broken centralized grid and a bankrupt state that can no longer secure liquid fuel.
Stop asking whether electric vehicles are "saving" Cuba from sanctions. You are asking the wrong question. The real question is: How does a nation function when its primary energy carrier shifts from petroleum to an intermittent, crumbling electrical grid?
The answer is messy, fascinating, and offers a stark warning for the rest of the world about the limits of forced electrification.
The Grid Fallacy Why Plugging In Is Not a Victory
The competitor pieces love to frame the rise of motos eléctricas (electric scooters) and triciclos (e-tricycles) as a triumph of Cuban resilience over the US embargo. They paint a picture of a population pivot that bypasses the gas pump by tapping into the socket.
This ignores basic physics and economics.
Cuba’s electrical grid is a disaster. The country relies heavily on aging, Soviet-era thermoelectric plants that are well past their operational lifespan. They require constant maintenance and, ironically, heavy crude oil or imported diesel to run.
When you charge an electric tricycle in Havana, you are not sticking it to the oil companies or bypassing the embargo. You are putting demand on a grid that regularly fails, leading to blackouts that last for hours or even days.
Let's look at the actual mechanics of the Cuban energy crisis.
- Fuel Scarcity: Cuba’s traditional supplier, Venezuela, has drastically cut its subsidized oil shipments over the last decade as its own production collapsed. Cuba has to hunt for fuel on the spot market with hard currency it does not have.
- Infrastructure Decay: The Antonio Guiteras power plant, one of the island's largest, frequently goes offline for "unscheduled maintenance."
- The Efficiency Paradox: Charging a small battery from a highly inefficient, oil-fired thermal plant is often less energy-efficient than burning gasoline directly in a modern, small-displacement internal combustion engine.
People are not choosing electric tricycles because they are superior. They are choosing them because the state-controlled fuel distribution network has completely collapsed. If you wait in line for gasoline in Havana, you might waste three days of your life only to find the station has run out. If you have an electric scooter, you can at least plug it in at night and pray the power stays on long enough to get a charge.
It is a choice between two bad options, not a revolutionary leap forward.
Let's Deconstruct the People Also Ask Nonsense
If you search for information on Cuba’s transport crisis, you will find a list of sanitized questions that completely miss the point. Let’s answer them honestly.
Are electric vehicles helping Cuba overcome the US embargo?
No. They are moving the bottleneck. Instead of needing imported gasoline, Cubans now need imported lead-acid or lithium-ion batteries, replacement tires, and electric motors. Where do these come from? Mostly China. Cuba is trading a reliance on Venezuelan oil for a reliance on Chinese hardware. Furthermore, without massive capital investment in the grid—which the government cannot afford—the influx of EVs will eventually cause localized grid failures. You cannot fix a supply shortage by adding more demand.
Is cycling a viable long-term transport solution for Cuba?
Only if you want to decimate productivity. Bicycles are fantastic for dense, wealthy European cities with temperate climates and massive infrastructure for cycling. They are a disaster for a tropical country where workers need to travel long distances in 90-degree heat with high humidity. Forcing a workforce onto bicycles lowers the radius of economic activity. People cannot commute as far, they cannot carry as much cargo, and they arrive at work exhausted. Glorifying the bicycle in this context is a form of poverty tourism.
The Hard Truth About the Cuban EV Market
Here is the part where we look at the actual business model of these electric tricycles, and it is not what you think.
These vehicles are not being handed out by a benevolent state, nor are they cheap. A decent electric scooter or tricycle in Cuba can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 USD. In a country where the average state salary is equivalent to about $20 to $40 a month, how on earth are people buying them?
They aren't. Their relatives in Miami are.
The Cuban EV boom is financed almost entirely by remittances from the Cuban diaspora. It is a fascinating capitalist workaround inside a socialist economy. Cuban-Americans purchase these vehicles online through specialized e-commerce sites or ship them directly from Panama or China.
The Cuban government, realizing it cannot provide public transport, has lowered import tariffs on these vehicles to let the private sector solve the problem. But look at the friction involved:
- Massive Markup: Middlemen in Panama and online storefronts charge a premium.
- No Warranty: If your battery dies or your controller fries due to a power surge on the unstable grid, you are on your own. There is no official dealer network.
- The Black Market for Parts: A thriving underground economy has emerged just to keep these machines running. People are rebuilding lithium batteries in their living rooms without proper safety equipment.
I admit there is a dark side to my contrarian view. The sheer grit of the Cuban mechanic is awe-inspiring. I have seen local shops adapt heavy industrial batteries meant for stationary backup power and strap them to the back of tricycles. It is brilliant, dangerous, and a testament to human survival. But let's not call it a "sustainable transport strategy." It is ad-hoc survivalism.
The Playbook for Surviving a Collapsing Infrastructure
If you find yourself in an economy where the central systems are failing, the Cuban experience actually offers some incredibly valuable, unconventional lessons. Forget the macro-level debate about sanctions and socialism. Look at what the individuals are doing to survive.
1. Own the Means of Energy Storage, Not Just Generation
Everyone talks about solar panels. Solar is great, but in a collapsing grid environment, storage is king. Cubans who are surviving this crisis effectively are those who have decoupled their daily energy needs from the grid's timeline.
- The Tactic: They charge massive battery banks whenever the grid happens to be live, or they use small, portable solar setups to trickle-charge batteries.
- The Lesson: In any volatile environment, the ability to buffer resources is more valuable than the ability to generate them.
2. Disregard "Specialized" Tech for Generalist Hardware
In the West, we love highly specialized, proprietary technology. If your Tesla breaks, you need a Tesla technician. In Cuba, that is a death sentence for a machine.
- The Tactic: The most successful transport operators use vehicles with standardized, non-proprietary Chinese parts. A 48V brushless motor is a 48V brushless motor. Brushes can be fabricated; magnets can be glued back in.
- The Lesson: When supply chains get brittle, high-tech becomes a liability. Dumb, standardized, and fixable beats smart and proprietary every time.
3. Create Micro-Grids of Trust
The state cannot move people. So, the people move the people. The rise of the triciclo has created a hyper-local, decentralized transit network. Drivers operate on specific short routes, charging cell phones for passengers, moving goods, and acting as the lifeblood of local neighborhoods.
- The Tactic: Operators pool resources to buy parts and even share charging points that have more reliable power.
- The Lesson: When large institutions fail, economic activity does not stop; it just scales down to the size of a neighborhood.
The romanticizing of Cuba's "green" shift needs to stop. The shift to electric vehicles in Cuba is not a progressive choice. It is the sound of a society desperately trying to maintain mobility as its industrial base turns to rust. It is a warning to the rest of us about what happens when you mandate a shift to a specific technology without securing the underlying infrastructure to support it.
Stop looking at the shiny new electric tricycles. Look at the smoke coming from the power plants trying to charge them.
