Facing US oil blockade, Cuban man powers car with charcoal

By Daniel Trotta

AGUACATE, Cuba, March 19 (Reuters) – Juan Carlos Pino, a Cuban mechanic with an eighth-grade education, may have found a way to outsmart the U.S. oil blockade.

Employing the kind of ingenuity many Cubans have developed over decades of U.S. sanctions, Pino, 56, modified his 1980 Polish-built Fiat Polski to run on charcoal, a cheaper and more abundant fuel than gasoline since Washington cut off oil shipments to the Caribbean island in January.

Pino built the contraption from his workshop in Aguacate, population 5,000, a town about 70 km (45 miles) east of Havana that once thrived on a now-shuttered sugar refinery. Today it is surrounded by cow pastures and stone quarries where men walk to work with long hand saws flexed over their shoulders.

In town, Pino is a celebrity with his two-cylinder Polski chugging about the pot-holed streets, its distinctive 60-liter (15-gallon) fuel tank soldered to the back.

Townspeople gather to take selfies, some incredulous, others asking if he could make one for them.

“In a crisis like this, it’s the best option we have,” said Pino, who wants to modify a tractor next. “We need mobility, we need to be able to plant crops.”

BUILT FROM SCRAP

Pino built his device entirely from scrap and repurposed items. The charcoal burns inside a converted propane tank that is sealed shut with the lid of a transformer. A filter is made from a stainless steel milk jug stuffed with old clothes.

Scarcity has long been a constant in Cuba, with its Soviet-style command economy. That has grown worse since the U.S. deposed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, cutting off Venezuelan oil while threatening tariffs on any other countries that supply Cuba with fuel.

Power blackouts are now the norm. Gasoline is strictly rationed. On the black market, gasoline sells for $8 per liter, or US$30 per gallon – six times the official price.

Enter the inventor. Pino once created a machine, built from a motorcycle, to milk three cows at a time. He said he’d been contemplating the charcoal-fired automobile for several years, inspired at first by his late uncle. Pino also credited open-source technology promoted by Edmundo Ramos, an Argentine innovator behind DriveOnWaste.com.

In an interview, Ramos said other Cubans have called him asking for tips, including one who is powering a neighborhood with a 50-kilowatt generator.

“An ice maker contacted me first and said he cannot make ice. Then an ice-cream guy contacted me, then a shop owner,” Ramos said.

He said just about any engine can be converted to run on charcoal by drawing hot gas instead of gasoline into the carburetor.

‘INVENTION OF THE YEAR’

Pino rolled out the charcoal-powered Polski on March 4. In one early test run, the car completed an 85-km (53-mile) trip, reaching a top speed of 70 kph (43 mph). 

Fellow Cubans are gobsmacked.

“This is amazing. It’s left me speechless,” said Yurisbel Fonseca, 27, who stopped his motorcycle to get a closer look and take pictures.

Narvis Cruz, 53, called it “the invention of the year.”

Cruz knows something about Cuban jerry-rigging. He drives a 1953 Pontiac that runs on a 1940s Perkins engine with a Mercedes transmission, a steering system from the Czech group AVIA, and a differential made by the East German company Ifa.

“That’s Cuba,” Cruz said. “A salad made of everything.”

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Additional reporting by Alien Fernandez; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)