2min chapter

The Death of American Democracy?

This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler

CHAPTER

Is Democracy Going to Survive?

January 6th was a pivotal moment where Republicans basically had one of two choices to make. They could either break with Donald Trump and draw a line under his presidency or commit to the forces of pro-democracy movements. And unfortunately, they have chosen to do the latter. In fact, he's arguably more powerful than ever in the conservative movement.

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Speaker 3

That's a huge saving. But does the infrastructure really exist? Because according to something that I read, it seems like there's only one charging station in the whole of Addis or something.

Speaker 1

Absolutely. So the infrastructure, unfortunately, has not caught up. So but when you say infrastructure, so there are two things, right? actually afford to buy these vehicles, most of them normally live, you know, either in apartment buildings or in houses that they can find more or less, you know, facilities to be able to charge their vehicles. But let's say, especially if you're trying to get out of Addis Ababa, which is the major city, it would be definitely a big issue for you to find a charging infrastructure. And people are trying to find their own way of finding solutions by themselves, because even what you would see in other countries in terms of even battery swapping or charging infrastructure as a business is still not, what do you call it, an economic sector, either the private sector or any other investor is looking into because there's just no, it's a very new thing that no one has ventured to. But the plan is, again, by the government to at least set up close to 3000 charging stations in the next three to five years. So hopefully, yeah, it will get there. Now,

Speaker 3

it's been 12 months since the policy was changed. I wonder how that has impacted on livelihoods in Ethiopia. And I also wonder whether you think electric vehicles have stepped up and are addressing the issue of rising fuel costs for customers in Ethiopia.

Speaker 1

When you start speaking to individual owners of electric vehicles, who used to have ICE vehicles and have switched, they would clearly tell you that there is both time-saving aspect of it. because I don't know if you've been in Addis recently, but you will see that people sometimes line up three to five hours to find fuel at, you know, at stations, at fuel stations. In addition to the time, there's also, of course, the cost aspect, as I mentioned earlier. It's a significant amount of saving in terms of cost. So again, that's, you know, that's the positive part from individuals or individual owners. So we have yet to see a generalized research that puts together enough information for us to say this is how it has changed the landscape. But I think also on the negative side is there's a lot of acceptance of EVs from a certain level of the economy without really understanding the after effects of owning lithium batteries, whether this new brands and products that you see in the market actually have the spare parts to back up their products, you know, considering also the fact that there's consistent energy fluctuation and things like that, you know, how you manage your vehicle and maintain your battery life and things like that is not fully realized. So I think it's quite early to say this is the impact on livelihoods of people. That's

Speaker 3

brilliant.