Cuba's Electric Vehicle Factory Expands Production Amid Energy Transition Push

On a Friday afternoon in May, Cuba's president walked into a factory in Boyeros, a municipality of Havana, where workers were assembling electric vehicles on three production lines. Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez had come to see VEDCA—the International Economic Association for Caribbean Electric Vehicles—a joint venture between the Chinese firm Tianjin Dongxing and the Cuban company Minerva. The operation had grown quietly but decisively since its founding in 2021, emerging from the tail end of the pandemic with ambitions that seemed to expand each year.

Julio Oscar Pérez Pérez, the director, explained the partnership to reporters with evident satisfaction. The relationship between the two parent companies stretched back more than two decades, he said, but the formal joint venture had only begun operations five years earlier. In that first year, they produced just over one thousand units. By 2024, they had reached ten thousand. Last year—2025—the factory had generated more than twelve million dollars in revenue, a figure that reflected not just volume but the company's growing footprint in Cuban commerce and daily life.

The factory currently produces three main product lines: electric bicycles, electric motorcycles, and electric tricycles. But the ambitions extended further. By August of this year, Pérez Pérez said, the first samples of medium-powered electric automobiles would arrive—vehicles capable of traveling between two hundred and fifty kilometers on a single charge, with top speeds of eighty to ninety kilometers per hour. The company was also exploring electric pickup trucks. These were not theoretical exercises. They reflected a calculated response to a concrete problem: Cuba faced chronic fuel shortages, and the demand for electric transport had become so intense that the factory could not keep pace with orders.

The factory's workforce numbered ninety-six people, earning an average monthly salary of sixteen thousand five hundred pesos, with plans to soon receive bonuses in foreign currency. Quality was not incidental to their work—signs in the assembly hall read "Quality is first" and "Quality is the life of the company." The operation had two main sales channels: international payment platforms, through which customers abroad could purchase vehicles for delivery and warranty service in Cuba, and increasingly, Cuban retail chains. The company had already sold more than one thousand bicycles and motorcycles to the state-run TRD currency stores, and projected closing 2026 with sales to TRD exceeding two million dollars. Plans were underway to open mixed TRD-VEDCA stores in Havana, Villa Clara, Santiago de Cuba, and Holguín.

But the factory's significance extended beyond commerce. Pérez Pérez outlined plans for a structural transformation. The company intended to establish a mixed enterprise—a new legal entity—that would manufacture the metal frames and chassis for tricycles domestically, rather than importing them. This shift would bring substantial cost savings and represent a deepening of local production capacity. The new operation would incorporate advanced technology: laser-cutting machines and robotic welding systems designed to improve product quality and consistency.

Energy independence was woven into the company's future. The administrative building already operated on a photovoltaic system that met all its electrical needs. A larger project, already approved, would be completed by August or September, granting the entire factory independence from Cuba's national electrical grid. Moreover, all tricycles leaving the factory going forward would come equipped with solar panels. The company was not simply producing vehicles for an energy transition; it was embodying that transition in its own operations.

Díaz-Canel's remarks during his tour framed the factory as more than a manufacturing site. He called it a bastion of cooperation with China and a concrete expression of the "shared future community" Cuba and the People's Republic were building together. He emphasized that the factory should distinguish itself nationally as innovative and developmental. But his most pointed observation concerned strategy: electric vehicle production, he said, was integral to Cuba's energy transition—one of the country's highest priorities, alongside food production and defense. The workers at VEDCA, he told them, had become important actors in that transition. Before leaving, he promised to return before year's end and invited them to alert him directly if bureaucratic obstacles arose. "It is very encouraging," he said, "to visit places like this in such difficult times."