Tourist Carriages Go Electric in Brussels
There are a lot of different ways to see a beautiful city. You might take a walking tour, or ride an open-top bus. You could take a bicycle, or even jog around the most famous places.
But there are also many places where tourists like to sit in a horse-drawn carriage and move around slowly.
However, this summer the Belgian city of Brussels set its horses free and began using electric carriages instead.
According to Euronews, it's the first European city to make this change, completely moving from animals to EVs for tourist carriages.
The man who helped to make the change said part of the reason was to protect the animals.
Thibault Danthine (pronounced "TEE-bo Don-TEEN"), who runs the carriages, said that now it's "less accepted" to use horses to pull tourists around.
Animal rights groups say that making horses work pulling heavy carriages is cruel. Last year, a horse in the Spanish city of Seville died while pulling a tourist carriage in very hot weather.
Some cities have banned horse-drawn carriages. Barcelona, for example, banned them in 2018, but they're still found in a lot of places around the world.
In Brussels, Danthine sold his horses and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on three electric carriages. Two are already operating on the city's streets, while one more will be arriving in 2025.
They're made in Poland, and they still look like traditional carriages — they just don't need to be pulled by horses.
Each one can travel for about 120 kilometers before it needs to be recharged.
Danthine said tourists have been happy with the change. And the horses are probably happy too!
