Zero: The Climate Race Ethiopia’s fossil fuel car ban is a vision of the future
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Feb 19, 2026 Yuma Sasaki, founder and CEO of Dodai and an e-mobility entrepreneur in Ethiopia, describes building electric two-wheeler manufacturing and battery-swapping networks. He talks about why two-wheelers suit Addis Ababa, how policy changes spurred rapid EV adoption, and the logistics of local assembly, sourcing, and scaling in a challenging market.
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Mandate Chargers To Build Infrastructure Fast
- Use regulation to rapidly build charging infrastructure by mandating chargers at gas stations and sellers.
- Require charging ports in new housing and developments to expand access as adoption grows.
New EVs Beat Secondhand Imports
- Low-income countries largely run on secondhand cars, but EV adoption requires new vehicles and favors cheaper new models.
- Chinese brands like BYD and Chang'an quickly dominated due to affordability.
Tariffs Used To Spark Local Assembly
- Ethiopia encourages local assembly by applying low tariffs to fully knocked down kits and higher tariffs to finished cars.
- The tariff schedule is designed to grow domestic assembly capacity toward hundreds of plants.