Juan Carlos Pino rebuilt his 1980 Fiat 126p to run on charcoal gas, and the car has already covered 85 km in tests at speeds up to 70 km/h.
Cuba's fuel crunch drove the conversion after U.S. and Venezuelan oil supplies stopped in January, leaving gasoline rationed and black-market prices near $8 per liter—about six times the state price.
Pino assembled the system from recycled parts, using a sealed 60-liter propane cylinder as the gasifier and a clothes-filled balloon as a filter to feed gas from burning charcoal into the engine.
The workaround carries clear limits: wood-gas systems typically cut engine output by 30% to 50%, leaving the Fiat's 24-hp, 652-cc engine with roughly 12 to 17 hp.
The car has drawn local interest as outages persist, and Pino says he plans a similar coal-fueled conversion for his farm tractor if the crisis continues.