There are 200 vehicles in the assembly phase and another 300 “that should be received this year,” according to the Minister of Transportation
14ymedio, Havana, 24 April 2024 — The Cuban Government has made the circulation of electric tricycles on the Island a matter of State. Assembled in Cuba with imported parts, 183 vehicles of that class circulate in the country, according to the Minister of Transportation. However, in the many articles that it has dedicated to the subject, the official press avoids saying where they are brought from and who pays the 7,000 dollars that each one costs: the Chinese company Minghong and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
The association of both institutions with the Narciso López Roselló Equipment and Applications company – a branch of the Sidero Mecánica Industry group – has been active since 2018 and its results have been modest, but this year, its directors insist, manufacturing its own tricycles is a priority, although the conditions do not seem to have changed.
The State newspaper Granma, which interviewed the director of the company, Luis Madrigal, did not want to put its hands in the fire for Narciso López Roselló and titled its article with a hint of doubt: Electric tricycles, made in Cuba? The negative answer was given by the Minister of Transportation, Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, who in Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s program assured that there were 200 vehicles in the assembly phase and another 300 “that should be received this year.”
Those 500 tricycles in the project, which Transportation intends to “distribute” throughout the provinces, will continue to be a product assembled in the country with foreign parts. Madrigal, however, assures that there is a “commi