Solar Trikes Pick Up Havana Trash as Fuel Blockade Bites
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- El Rampeño launched in Havana's Vedado neighborhood last month as a private trash collection service charging 100 pesos/month for homes and 15,000 pesos for businesses, offering free pickup to "vulnerable people" — a notable departure in communist Cuba, where collection has always been free and government-run.
- Havana's garbage fleet has collapsed under a US-imposed fuel blockade, with over half the city's garbage trucks not operational and trash piling or burning on streets as a result.
- El Rampeño's tricycles are built by VEDCA — a joint venture between China's Tianjin Dongxing Industrial and Commercial Group and Cuban state-owned Minerva — each with a 5.4kWh LFP battery, 30–44 miles of range, 600 kg cargo capacity, and a 24 mph top speed.
- Company president Yasiel Hernández says El Rampeño now has 30 tricycles with 10 in active service; the project launched with just 5 vehicles, and within weeks the difference in cleanliness between its service area and surrounding streets was stark.
- Cuba has rapidly expanded solar power with Chinese help in response to the blockade, and a similar pattern played out in 2019 when electric motorcycles boomed on Havana's roads during a prior fuel shortage.
- Belly of the Beast, an independent outlet reporting from the ground in Cuba, documented the project's rollout and the visible impact on Vedado's streets.
Why it matters: El Rampeño marks the first fee-based private trash service in Cuba — a structural break from the state-run model — while its Chinese-built chassis show how Beijing is filling the commercial void left by US sanctions. For Vedado's roughly block-sized service area, the immediate payoff is measurable: cleaner streets within weeks of a 10-tricycle pilot.
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