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Ethiopia becomes first country to ban internal combustion engines: Only EVs allowed (www.notebookcheck.net)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 91 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#

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago

Good for them

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That bad, or that good?

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The catch is no one has a car.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's even better than all cars being EVs.

Rare W

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Poverty is the solution to climate change!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (2 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?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

@sir_pronoun GERD (the dam) is already partly operating but yes contested.

The plan seems to be primarily aimed at slowing fuel imports. Worth noting their leader Abiy has created a coalition of almost all the political parties so it's now almost a de-facto one party state (except places he has attacked like Tigray, which is now in famine).

Here is a better article on it

Personally I think there's going to be problems.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I think it would seem made up to anyone who had read the article. :)

[–] [email protected] 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?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I see what you mean now, apologies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

All G fam

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So hydrogen cars would not be allowed either?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Ethiopian Vehicles

[–] [email protected] 2 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?

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You know you're right, Taxing the rich IS bad. It doesn't go far enough, we should seize all their assets instead. Good thinking imaginary blue collar moron.

Wait, no, that's not what I ...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

We should absolutely collect 100% tax on every penny above 999 mil for starters. Trickle down economics is a lie.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That makes absolutely no sense. For one, it's not like there are people who have a billion dollars salary - that's just not how it works.

Second, if you make a hard cutoff like that you disincentivize producing anything above that cutoff, so nobody would ever bother actually making that money if you take it all away anyway.

Third, if your taxes are too too drastic you'll just drive those people and their investment (which - like it or not - still usually has some positive impact) away creating competition for yourself in regions with less strict taxes effectively kneecapping yourself.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It makes all the sense.

I‘m not talking income, I‘m talking assets. Net worth if you will.

Example: you own 3 businesses worth 500 mil $ each (or whatever combination makes sense to you). To make business in a country with this mindset or even travel through it, you can only own up to 999 mil so you either give away 501 mil worh or you are banned from said country.

Your argument is in bad faith because you‘re not actually in the position to be affected by the negative impact of this so you just assume what they will do (not making more money, going to the competition etc.). Billionaires arent smart, they start privileged and are ruthless. We dont need ruthless to survive as a species, nor do we need it to live a good life. I say we need to get rid of it to survive.

Additionally, in opposition what daddy corpo tells you, competition is what makes things evolve. All companies that have killed off competition have slowed down improvement, made everything worse for the customers. Competition between companies is what keeps them improving, not monopolisties.

Classic tech bro speak btw.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

FFS. That's not how any of this works. I'm kinda tired of pointing out the issues because your mind is clearly set, so it'll be just a few.

Example: you own 3 businesses worth 500 mil $ each (or whatever combination makes sense to you). To make business in a country with this mindset or even travel through it, you can only own up to 999 mil so you either give away 501 mil worh or you are banned from said country.

Ahh I see. My bad, that's even dumber than I thought. For starters, you do realize that net worth is a made up number that cannot actually be calculated, right? It's an educated guess, at best.

There is a lot wrong with this thinking, like the fact that "net worth" is not some official number you can actually calculate, it's just a guess.

Your argument is in bad faith because you‘re not actually in the position to be affected by the negative impact of this

So because (you think) it doesn't affect me I can't voice my opinion on it and it's automatically bad faith because I disagree? Wow, what a way to discuss.

If your idea led to a change in economy (which it most definitely would), it would affect me. It's kind of sad you don't realize that that is a possibility. Comparatively tiny changes in taxation have had massive impact on some industries, companies, and thus the people employed there.

Billionaires arent smart, they start privileged and are ruthless. We dont need ruthless to survive as a species, nor do we need it to live a good life. I say we need to get rid of it to survive.

I see you've met a lot of rich people and know how they operate, why they do what they do, and that all their wealth has been obtained immorally to say the least. That kinda tells me all I need to know.

Additionally, in opposition what daddy corpo tells you, competition is what makes things evolve. All companies that have killed off competition have slowed down improvement, made everything worse for the customers. Competition between companies is what keeps them improving, not monopolisties.

I'm talking about competition for your country (or whatever region that would enact such rules). That's not a good thing, not for the people living there who would (supposedly) push for such change.

Like, look. I get your sentiment, I also don't like how companies evade taxes and that there's a squeeze on the middle class where a tiny fraction ascends to the 0.01% of wealth while everyone else is pushed towards poverty. That all sucks and should be addressed. But the way you think it can be fixed is just nonsense and sounds like something a 15 year old with no idea how the world works came up with.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I‘m pretty shocked at the amount of condescension and insults you‘re throwing my way. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Frankly, I know a thing or two about making money and building companies. I have built several. I have also met many very rich people. Needless to say I was quite shocked at how few of them are actually competent or even original.

The vast majority I‘ve met is quite smart but vastly more dominant than other people which makes all the difference. There are a few that are outrageously smart but usually thats not the defining factor. Millionaires and billionaires are not great inventors. They‘re good at manipulation first and intelligent second.

Its the same in every class. The narcissists and psychopaths dominate everyone else. I‘m obviously not talking about people who suffer from clinically diagnosed npd and aspd but the undiagnosed „functional“ variety. But I digress.

The important part in the people I talk about (billionaires) isnt making a lot of money. Thats easy if you’re smart and determined or ruthless. The hard part is not losing it, either by being stolen from or making mistakes. But that also does not explain billionaires imo. To go over the top like this, you need to accumulate against any form of empathy you might have with other people. Instead of steadily giving away to others so they can have a life too you need to amass it all in your pocket because others are so beneath you that you dont trust them even the welfare they would be paid from your taxes.

Also, since you dont seem to know the basics of investment: there are extensive archives about every penny these people own. They usually own many companies, which in turn own other companies. Thankfully this is all written down and banks check for this every time someone needs a loan. Otherwise someone like musk wouldn’t have gotten a multi billion dollar loan. It’s incredibly naive to think that its not possible to determine it. The funniest thing is that the government tax agencies make assumptions about your income if you fail to report it and tax you according to it. Thats exactly what I‘m talking about. It would be so easy to make this happen and one reason some people dont want this is because they are so naive to believe they can get there, ever. Otherwise there is no reason for a normal person to accept billionaire overlords.

One other possibility would be that starbucks for example, one of the worst tax evaders in history, would leave your country if they werent allowed to make their business as usual. But what corpo apologists dont see is that this is not how the market works. If they leave, someone else comes. And as much as I despise the leader of russia, making someone follow your law or taking away their IPs was a pretty ballsy move. Thats what I would do with companies that fail to meet the criteria to make business in my country.

It is all a little rough around the edges and someone with a little nuance should sand it down here and there but I‘m pretty sure this would help.

I‘m giving you a chance btw. I wont block you if you do away with the condescension and insults. If you dont, be ready to be blocked.

Have a good one.

[–] [email protected] 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.