Solar-powered tricycles help Cubans navigate fuel shortages and blackouts

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s iconic vintage cars have all but disappeared and in their place, small electric tricycles — most of them made in China — have become the primary means of transportation for hundreds of thousands of Cubans grappling with a prolonged fuel crisis.

These are no ordinary electric tricycles — many Cubans have outfitted them with solar panels, allowing the vehicles to recharge without relying on the island nation's strained power grid.

The three-wheelers are a far cry from the old-timers that only a year ago cruised the streets spewing clouds of black smoke.

“This is how people get around now,” said 40-year-old Liecer de la Cruz, who owns one of these vehicles.

The tricycles, with a cost between $2,000 and $4,000, are used to transport goods and serve fixed routes once covered by buses.

While their price is out of reach for most Cubans, many have sold their older gasoline-powered cars to buy the tricycles. Others got them from relatives abroad, where they are generally cheaper, and some small-business owners even used their profits to invest in them, expecting to recoup the cost.

In January, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba, which produces only about 40% of the fuel it needs. Since then, just a single oil tanker has arrived on the island, in late March — down from about eight a month previously.

The impact on daily life in Cuba has been significant.

Rolling blackouts have worsened, exacerbating hardships in a country whose economy has been in crisis for five years. Shortages of food and medicine have deepened, and public transportation has been sharply reduced.

Amid the crisis, electric tricycles have become indispensable. They transport goods, serve fixed routes once covered by buses and, in some Havana neighborhoods, they are used to collect garbage.

People with heavy shopping bags can catch rides on the tricycles — a slow, hot and uncomfortable ride. But it's better than walking.

“If you can pay for it, you just take it; otherwise you can’t go anywhere,” said Berta Ferrer, a 52-year-old clerk at a store in central Havana where she works four days a week.

She pays about 500 Cuban pesos — less than $1 — for the ride, a significant expense in a country where monthly salaries average about $10 for state workers and roughly $40 for private-sector employees.

Electric tricycles from Chinese brands such as Zonsen and Jinpeng have become a common sight on Cuba’s streets. Many are bought in countries such as Panama and shipped to the island by relatives or importers for resale, and they run on gel or lithium batteries. Under an agreement with China, the Vedca brand is assembled in Cuba.

Some owners have installed solar panels on the awnings over seats of the tricycle, allowing them to recharge on the go and keep operating despite the island’s energy crisis.

“There are so many tricycles in Havana that you can’t spend 10 minutes on a street without seeing countless numbers of them pass by,” said 29-year-old engineer Carlos Álvarez, who owns a workshop specializing in electric vehicles.

He spoke as he was installing a mounting bracket for a solar panel on one of the tricycles and acknowledged the investment can be costly — about $500 — but said it pays off quickly as it helps owners cope with fuel shortages and blackouts.

Ricardo Quintero, an engineer who owns one of the tricycles, said he uses it to transport produce to the vegetable stand he runs with his family.

“I think this is here to stay,” he said, looking at his three-wheeler.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

People transport solar panels on an electric tricycle in Havana, Cuba, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

People ride in electric tricycles in Havana, Cuba, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

People ride in an electric tricycle in Havana, Cuba, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

People ride in an electric tricycle in Havana, Cuba, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

People ride in an electric tricycle equipped with a solar panel in Havana, Cuba, Friday, July 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Last December, after Make America Healthy Again activists drew up a petition to get him fired, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin pledged to release a formal agenda of MAHA priorities that his agency would pursue, including protections against harmful chemicals and other health concerns.

But eight months after its first mention and after repeated promises it was being drafted, the so-called MAHA agenda is nowhere to be found. When asked for a status update this week, an EPA spokesperson said MAHA is an ongoing effort, not a single report.

The apparent reversal on the release of a formal environmental health agenda is the latest in a cascade of disappointments for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA movement, who say they've lost faith that the Trump administration will take any significant action on pesticides, chemicals or other issues they view as key to address America's chronic disease epidemic. It also reflects the EPA's relentless rollback of environmental regulations even in the face of pressure from an important voting bloc that has supported President Donald Trump.

“I had really hoped that there would be specific steps that were taken through a MAHA agenda,” said activist Kelly Ryerson, whose social media account “Glyphosate Girl” focuses on nontoxic food systems. “We haven’t had any of the wins that we were requesting.”

Many in the diverse coalition of MAHA activists that Trump credits for helping him win back the White House say they plan to vote on issues over party in November's congressional elections, raising the political stakes of their increasingly public tensions with the Republican administration.

“People are done with the profits of corporations being prioritized over public health,” said Alexandra Muñoz, a molecular toxicologist who collaborates with activists on certain issues. “And I think that will have an important role in the midterms.”

“Trump’s EPA,” as Zeldin frequently calls the agency, has vigorously pursued a deregulatory agenda. Earlier this year, Zeldin proposed overturning the landmark finding that climate change is a threat to human health. He moved to roll back dozens of environmental regulations in what he called “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” froze billions of dollars for clean energy and upended agency research.

At the same time, Zeldin has touted multiple “MAHA wins," some of which activists say are anything but. For example, he said the agency intends to regulate some chemicals called phthalates for environmental and workplace risks, but didn’t address the thousands of consumer products that contain the ingredients.

This week, the EPA diverted from past assurances that the MAHA report was in its “final stages,” telling The Associated Press in an email that the EPA’s actions should speak for themselves.

“The notion that MAHA is a single document waiting to be unveiled fundamentally misrepresents how we operate,” an agency spokesperson said, adding that work on MAHA priorities is “active and expanding every day.”

Ryerson and other MAHA activists said they've engaged with agency officials about changes they'd like to see, and occasionally succeeded. Her network of farmers worked with the administration on a recent executive order to advance regenerative agriculture. But she said EPA then used the order to justify new proposed uses for various herbicides, a move she called a “slap in the face.”

The same week, the Supreme Court dealt another blow to the MAHA cause in siding with pesticide maker Bayer in a ruling related to its legal liability for alleged harm caused by its Roundup weedkiller. The Trump administration had backed the company in the case.

Environmental activists say the rise of Kennedy and his MAHA mission has rippled across the administration, raising the public's awareness of pesticides — and expectations that Trump's administration would act.

“If RFK and the MAHA movement hadn’t put that issue in the center of the public spotlight, no one would be scrutinizing this nearly as closely," said Sarah Starman, a senior food and agriculture campaigner at the nonprofit Friends of the Earth.

In a well-publicized gesture aimed in part at the MAHA movement, Zeldin in April included microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants that could be regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Activists had pressured Zeldin for months to crack down on microplastics and other environmental contaminants.

But in a reversal in late June, the EPA did not include microplastics or pharmaceuticals on a list of chemicals it plans to test for under a mandatory program used to collect information about concerning chemicals in drinking water that could be harming human health.

The move rendered the EPA's earlier public health promises "functionally toothless,'' said Betsy Southerland, a former senior official in EPA’s water office.

Zeldin said on social media that “the technology to test and treat for microplastics in drinking water is still in development.” The EPA said in a Federal Register notice that it was “not feasible to develop a drinking water analytical method within the statutory timeframe.”

After making “a big splash in the press” on microplastics, "EPA has quietly stalled that momentum," said Southerland.

A White House Make America Healthy Again Report, released a few months into Trump’s second term, identified long-term exposure to environmental chemicals — including those widely found in plastics — as a leading cause of chronic disease in children.

Jeremy Symons, a senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees and political appointees who are critical of the Trump administration, said Zeldin “pays lip service to MAHA, but sadly he is actually making Americans less safe from toxic chemicals.''

Alongside MAHA's influence on the Trump administration, industry lobbyists have made inroads at the EPA.

Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the soybean industry, leads pesticide policy at the EPA. The agency recently allowed continued use of dicamba, a weedkiller that has been linked to increased risk for some cancers.

Zen Honeycutt, a MAHA activist and founding executive director of Moms Across America, said the move is “what happens when the EPA allows itself to be pressured by corporations and by business.”

EPA also employs other former industry insiders. Nancy Beck, a former executive at the chemical lobbying group the American Chemistry Council, is a top official in EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Lynn Dekleva, another former chemistry council executive, serves as a Beck deputy.

The EPA said Kunkler and other political appointees have consulted with agency ethics officials to resolve any potential conflicts of interest. The MAHA movement has “driven this agency's work since President Trump's first day in office," a spokesperson said in an email, citing various initiatives including $945 million in grants to help states and communities cut “forever chemicals” known as PFAS in drinking water and identifying 30 drinking water contaminants proposed for nationwide monitoring.

On Thursday, the agency announced it was teaming up with Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to protect consumers from heavy metals and other contaminants in food.

But for Ryerson and others, the lack of a promised MAHA agenda reads as a tactic to escape accountability.

“It absolves them of any failures, especially when it comes to midterms,” Ryerson said. “They won’t have to point to some list that they haven’t been able to achieve really anything on.”

FILE - Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection Agency administrator, listens during an event about loosening a federal refrigerant rule, in the Oval Office at the White House, May 21, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

FILE - Kelly Ryerson, known by her supporters as "Glyphosate Girl," poses for a portrait, Jan. 22, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, File)

FILE - Containers of Roundup are displayed on a store shelf in San Francisco, Feb. 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Haven Daley, File)

FILE - A blue rectangular piece of microplastic sits on the finger of a researcher with the University of Washington-Tacoma environmental science program, after it was found in debris collected from the Thea Foss Waterway, in Tacoma, Wash., May 19, 2010. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

FILE - Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., arrives on stage at the inaugural Make America Healthy Again summit, Nov. 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr., File)