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Transcript

History and the Future of the Automobile (Advancefd Program) · Spotlight English: Advanced

• 0:03
  Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Roger Bassick and I'm Katie Blake. Spotlight uses
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  a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
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  matter where in the world they live. A woman drives a black convertible over
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  a hill. Her hair flows behind her out of this open roofed vehicle.
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  At the top of the hill, the road bends around sharp rocks. The
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  sea crashes below and out above the sea, the sun begins to set.
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  The woman parks her car and looks out over the ocean. The engine of
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  her electric powered car is quiet. Its sound disappears into the wind. Cars
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  are everywhere. They take people to remote places. They take people to work
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  and to their homes. Usually these automobiles are powered by gasoline or petrol,
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  but things were not always this way, and they may not always be either.
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  Today's Spotlight is on the history and future of the automobile. People have
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  dreamed about creating cars for a very long time. They wanted a way to
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  transport people and goods without animals, but it took a very long time to
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  make one that worked. Nicholas Cuno was a French inventor. He built the
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  first car in the late seventeen hundreds. It used steam to power its engines,
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  and it could drive up speeds of about seven kilometers per hour. But
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  steam engines were very large and they took a lot of work to run horses
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  cost less money. They could also transport people more quickly. Many other inventors
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  tried to build a smaller steam powered car that was easier to use, but
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  cars did not become popular until someone invented a different kind of engine. The
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  engine that powers many of the cars you see on the road today is called
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  an internal combustion engine. Many people helped to create the internal combustion engine,
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  but the first person to use it in a car was Carl Bins in eighteen
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  eighty five. Internal combustion engines are smaller than steam engines, They use gasoline
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  to fuel the engine, and they can produce more power to push a car
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  faster. This new engine made cars more popular around the world, but for
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  a long time only the very wealthy could buy them. Cars cost a lot
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  of money because of the way people made them. One or two people made
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  each car by hand, so cars took a long time to make. Also,
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  each car was different, so they cost a lot of money. To
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  fix. But in the early nineteen hundreds, a man from the United States
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  changed how cars were made. His name was Henry Ford. Ford was a
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  car engineer. First, he made cars the traditional way, but he believed
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  he could make them more easily. He did this by designing one car model
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  that many different people could help him make. He used simple parts, then
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  his workers simply followed the same design plan for every car. He even made
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  the cars all the same color. This let Ford produce many cars that were
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  all the same in a short amount of time. Ford's method changed the way
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  industry works around the world. He designed a system that made it easy to
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  produce large amounts of his product, and he paid his work as enough money
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  so that they could buy his product. Ford made it possible for many people
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  to buy a car. Ford's most popular car was called the Model. By
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  the nineteen twenties, Ford had produced over fifteen million Model T cars. Many
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  other car companies also used Ford's methods. Cars began to cost less money all
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  over the world, but the number of cars on the road also created a
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  problem. Every car needed gasoline for fuel burning. Gasoline worked very well to
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  power cars, but it also creates a lot of pollution. The number of
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  cars made some cities difficult to live in. People exposed to too much vehicle
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  pollution developed problems with their breathing. Burning gasoline also creates carbon dioxide. Carbon
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  dioxide is a gas that leads to global climate change. Using gasoline was a
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  great idea when people started making cars. There were not many cars in the
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  beginning, so the pollution did not affect much. But today there are more
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  than one and a half billion cars on the road. The success of the
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  car has turned gasoline use into a danger. Kate Brunton is a representative from
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  Amber. Amber is a Dutch car company that makes electric self driving vehicles.
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  She spoke to the University Network about the problem of gasoline cars. The problem
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  is that owning cars, especially carsted use fuel is bad, but there's no
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  real choice. It is bad for consumers because the cost of owning most cars
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  is high. It is bad for the environment. It does not work well.
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  Most cars spend ninety percent of their time standing still. Today, many
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  car companies are working to make cars that do not need gasoline. For example,
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  many large vehicle manufacturers have begun to produce electric vehicles instead of burning fuel.
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  Electric vehicles store energy in batteries. For a long time, electric vehicles
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  were not very popular. They could not go very far or very fast.
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  This changed in two thousand and three with the creation of the Tesla Motor Company.
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  Tesla worked for many years to create an electric engine that worked as well
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  as gasoline engines, and in two thousand and eight they release the Tesla Roadster.
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  The Roadster was just as fast as a gasoline powered car, and it
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  could travel over three hundred kilometers on a single charge. Another newer creation is
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  the hybrid vehicle. Hybrid cars use technology from both gasoline and electric engines.
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  Hybrids have gasoline engines like normal cars, but the engines do not give power
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  to push the car forward. Instead, they give power to the battery.
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  The battery makes the car go forward. You do not need to charge the
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  battery in a hybrid car. The gasoline engine provides the power to the battery,
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  but the battery can power the car at low speeds, so the engine
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  does not have to turn on. Hybrid engines are smaller than gasoline engines,
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  and they require less gasoline to operate. Other companies have been experimenting with different
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  fuels. For example, it is possible to fuel a car with hydrogen.
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  Many large car companies are researching this new technology. Right now, it is
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  difficult to use hydrogen because it does not last very long. One tank full
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  of hydrogen may only be able to fuel a car for a very short time,
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  But people are hopeful that new technologies will help make hydrogen work in the
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  future. There are many possible paths for the future of the car. How
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  we travel has changed many times over the past hundred years, and it will
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  change again. It may be possible that there will be no single replacement for
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  the internal combustion engine in the future. There may be many different kinds of
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  cars, each with different fuels, or people may use cars less. Either
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  way, it is important to continue to invest in these new technologies. It
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  is important not only for the future of the car, but for the future
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  of humanity. Do you own a car, what kind of engine does it
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  have? Do you use buses or trains more often? Do you use a
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  motorbike or a bicycle to travel? You can leave a comment on our website
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  or email us at Radio at Radio English dot net. You can also comment
• 10:45
  on Facebook at Facebook dot com, Slash Spotlight Radio. The writer of this
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  program was Dan Christman, The producer was Micchio Ozaki. The voices you heard
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  were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for
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  this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and
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  read it on the internet at www dot Radio English dot net. This program
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  is called the History and Future of the Automobile. You can also get our
• 11:24
  programs delivered directly to your Android or Apple device through our free official Spotlight English
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  app. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye,