HAVANA - A green revolution is taking place on the streets of Havana, but it's by necessity rather than design.
Faced with a severe fuel crisis, which intensified after the United States placed the island under a de facto oil blockade last month, taxi drivers are ditching their cars and whisking passengers around on e-tricycles.
Cuba, already contending with years of crippling fuel shortages, has reached a breaking point after US President Donald Trump moved to starve the communist nation of oil.
The flow of crude from top ally Venezuela dried up after the US overthrow of its leader Nicolas Maduro and Trump has threatened tariffs on any other country stepping in to fill the breach.
To conserve energy, the government has announced a series of fuel rationing measures and slashed public transport.
As the days pass and fuel supplies dry up, the number of taxis cruising the streets of Havana has dwindled.
The few drivers left fill up at an eye-popping $5 per litre on the black market, which has led fares to triple.
Six- and eight-seater e-trikes, which cost around one-third of a taxi fare, have become a lifeline for cash-strapped Cubans.
There's a catch, however.
The vehicles have to be charged -- a constant headache in a city battling power outages of up to 12 hours a day, due to a lack of fuel for generating stations.
Like the even more ubiquitous e-scooter, e-trike owners have to wait for the lights to come back on to start their engines -- or plug in at the home of a friend or relative endowed with a generator or solar panels.