Ethiopia’s fossil fuel car ban is a vision of the future
Zero: The Climate Race
Bloomberg
4.8 • 296 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2024, Ethiopia did something revolutionary. It banned the import of fossil fuel cars and cut tariffs on electric vehicles. This week on Zero, Akshat Rathi talks with producer Oscar Boyd and Ethiopia-based EV entrepreneur Yuma Sasaki about the EV boom that ensued and what that tells us about the growth of EVs in rapidly developing countries like Ethiopia.
Read more:
- Electric Vehicle Sales Boom as Ethiopia Bans Fossil-Fuel Car Imports
- Dodai's website: https://dodai.co
Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd. Special thanks to Fasika Tadesse, Sommer Saadi, Laura Millan, and Sharon Chen. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is Tom Keene, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. |
| 0:06.1 | It's about making you smarter every business day. |
| 0:09.4 | I'm Paul Sweeney. |
| 0:10.2 | We bring you complete coverage of the U.S. market open. |
| 0:12.9 | We cover stocks, bonds, commodities, even crypto, all the information you need to excel. |
| 0:17.5 | And I'm Alexis Christophorus. |
| 0:19.3 | Bloomberg Surveillance also brings you the analysis |
| 0:21.6 | behind the headlines. We do that through conversations with the smartest names in economics, |
| 0:26.5 | finance, investment, and international relations. We do all this live each and every weekday, |
| 0:31.8 | then bring you the best analysis in our daily podcast. Search for Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere else you listen. |
| 0:41.9 | On the East Coast, listen at lunch. |
| 0:43.7 | And on the West Coast, listen as soon as you wake up. |
| 0:46.2 | That's the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast with Tom Keene, Paul Sweeney, and me, Alexis Christophorus. |
| 0:51.9 | Subscribe today, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:54.7 | Bloomberg Surveillance, essential listening each and every business day. |
| 1:02.6 | Welcome to Zero. I am Akshatrati. And I'm Oscar Boyd. Actually, I wanted to pull a stat |
| 1:08.2 | from an article that you recently wrote with your colleague, |
| 1:14.1 | Fasika, Tedese, who's based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. |
| 1:19.8 | And the stat is, even by the standards of low-income countries, Ethiopia has among the lowest car ownership rates at 13 vehicles per thousand people. |
| 1:23.9 | It's a fraction of the African average of 73 vehicles per thousand people. |
| 1:28.1 | And yet despite this, you've just published a long read article into Ethiopia's car market. |
| 1:33.2 | Why? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.