Make Your Way 5, Schulbuch mit Audio-CD und CD-ROM

Discuss these questions in your group: What are the good and bad points of an electric car? • Can you imagine your family buying an electric car? • Why/Why not? Now read the text from a newspaper. How many of the good and bad points you dis- • cussed are mentioned in the article? The article was written in 1996. How far have we • progressed with electric cars? There is a race on, a world-wide race to develop the clean electric car. After 100 years of petrol cars we don’t want to give up our cars, but we do all want to stop the pollution. The new hope is the fuel cell. With this new technol- ogy electric cars will be able to go without the heavy batteries of the old models. They only allowed the car to go 100 km before stopping to change or recharge its batteries. The new car can go for 250 km without stopping, and its top speed is over 100 km per hour. The new fuel cell uses hydrogen and produces electri- Read the text again and choose the correct answer to the questions. city in the car. The only waste product is pure water vapour, so there would be no dangerous, poisonous gases coming from the car and polluting the air. With this type of engine the car could go three times the distance for the same amount of energy as petrol fuelled cars. At the Berlin motor show in May, Daimler-Benz showed the first passenger van using fuel cells, which puts it three years ahead of US carmakers. But you will have to wait a bit before you can own one of these environmentally friendly cars. They won’t be on sale for a few years yet. 17 18 Electric cars are pollution-free 1 Which of these was not a problem with old electric cars? a Their batteries were too heavy. b They couldn’t go very far. c They weren’t very economical. d They were probably too slow. 3 How do new electric cars compare with old ones? a They are more economical. b They don’t use batteries. c They don’t produce any poisonous gases. d They are better designed. 2 How often will you have to recharge the cell of a new electric car if you travel at top speed? a every two hours b about every two and a half hours c every three hours d every four hours 4 Which country is leading the electric car race? a The USA b The UK c France d Germany 100 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv