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Ethiopia becomes first country to ban internal combustion engines: Only EVs allowed (www.notebookcheck.net)
submitted 9 months ago by fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to c/upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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[–] RdVortex@lemmy.world 87 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Probably helped by the fact that they have really low amount of cars anyway: They're ranked at 189th out of 195 countries when listed by motor vehicles by capita according to Wikipedia. They have a whopping of 10 vehicles per 1000 people and total of 1,200,000 vehicles in total while being the 13th most populous country in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_motor_vehicles_per_capita?wprov=sfti1#

[–] HurlingDurling@lemmy.world 29 points 9 months ago

Good for them

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ah, so this is basically mandating that your unicorn needs to be painted pink…

I suspected car ownership would be low, but I didn’t know it was THAT bad though.

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That bad, or that good?

[–] FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

Well usually I’m in the fuck cars camp, especially as I’m pretty much forced to bicycle everywhere.

In a rich western country, low car ownership would be great. But cars are also an indicator of personal and economic prosperity. Car ownership is good ‘to a point’ so to speak.

Since the per capita gross national income of Ethiopia is barely above a thousand dollars, I don’t think they’re making informed decisions vis-a-vis car ownership. They simply can’t afford them. Heck, they can barely afford a bicycle I imagine.

[–] Windex007@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Given that Ethiopia is essentially Utopia incarnate, good, obviously.

[–] Delphia@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I would wager significant money that China has a big hand in this.

The Belt and Road initiative has been letting them get their hooks into Africa quite well and Ethiopia is still not a rich country, if you are reasonably well off and can afford a vehicle chances are its not going to be a Polestar or a Tesla. BYD, LDV and GWM are going to become the default brands.

[–] Glytch@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

The Belt and Road initiative has been letting them get their hooks into Africa quite well

You say that with such menace as though the West having their hooks in Africa has gone so well for Africa

[–] csolisr@communities.azkware.net 29 points 9 months ago

Tired: going EV-only because of the environment and future-proofing

Wired: going EV-only because the gas/petrol is so darnged expensive to import

[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The catch is no one has a car.

[–] schnokobaer@lemmy.ml 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's even better than all cars being EVs.

Rare W

[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Poverty is the solution to climate change!

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It kind of is. The larger your income, the larger your carbon footprint, and that scales indefinitely.

[–] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not quite. The larger your consumption, the larger your carbon footprint.

Just because a person is rich doesn't mean they have to have a private jet.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

It's a generalization, but it's pretty reliable. Of course there are always exceptions.

[–] sir_pronoun@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So, can some insider give more information on this? The dam that they're planning to draw the energy from is highly contested, with Egypt, right? They also don't seem to have a lot of infrastructure for charging those vehicles. And apparently this decision hasn't been put into action yet?

[–] SuckMyWang@lemmy.world -5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I don’t live there anymore but my father owns a few small businesses that rely heavily on road transport. This decision hasn’t come into effect yet but is due to be implemented at the end of march. As a result there has been a huge influx of poor quality used cars on the roads and put into storage waiting to be sold at a markup. Most people here won’t be able to afford electric cars so it seems like a bad decision by a government trying to impress its neighbours on the global stage but it won’t matter because they are very popular with the younger voters. The most interesting part though is this was all made up. I live in Mexico and couldn’t point to Ethiopia on a map

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

So no more imports of cars unless they're electric.

What about trucks, busses, ships, planes etc?

Not to mention who has the money to buy a new electric car in todays economy anyway?

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do they have to tackle every problem at the same time?

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm only saying banning the import of internal combustion engine vehicles includes a whole host of things beyond just cars.

A lot of these other things dont have an electric counterpart available yet.

[–] essteeyou@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I see what you mean now, apologies.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 1 points 9 months ago

All G fam

[–] porcariasagrada@slrpnk.net 3 points 9 months ago

i heard chinese are dumping their ev's. not that ethiopia is that big of a consumer market.

[–] tostiman@sh.itjust.works -2 points 9 months ago

Yes, and will they import tricycles or motorcycles instead of cars?

[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 7 points 9 months ago

Did anyone read last the first paragraph? It'l takes effect in 2035. Many countries have the same pledge.

[–] CurlyMoustache@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Ethiopian Vehicles

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So hydrogen cars would not be allowed either?

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

They can be operated with a fuel cell, in which case it doesn't count as ICE.

[–] Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I applaud Ethiopia. Why are they the only ones to do so as drastically as we all should be?

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Money. It says so in the article. They can't afford to import fossils anymore but they have enough (or will have enough) domestically produced electricity.

Meanwhile the rest of the world is keeping the prices on fossil fuels low through inefficient subsidies worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

[–] perviouslyiner@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Specifically, they are just finishing a rather impressive 5GW hydropower project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam

[–] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because a lot of people are „experts“ in how a country should be run. Like we‘re all master soccer trainers when the worldcup starts.

The fact that a country might lose export or gdp numbers due to its drastic clean air measures is like fingers on a chalk board for these people.

The fact that these numbers are meaningless just shows we‘re all brainwashed to be nice little worker bees and care for our masters wealth more than our own air.

Its the same when a person with 30k yearly income says taxing the rich is bad.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago

Because it's idiocy and it's going to create great hardship for already impoverished people.

Read up on Sri Lanka's big move to being exclusively organic produce. They couldn't afford fertiliser imports so banned all fertiliser and pesticides. It was an unmitigated disaster.

The same is happening here. Their economy is a train wreck, no one will sell them fuel because they don't have any US currency and their own currency could be worthless tomorrow.

This law just makes corrupt border official shenanigans more lucrative. They'll repeal it in 6 months or so when there are riots.