WEBVTT

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Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Roger Basick
and I'm Katie Blake. Spotlight uses a

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special English method of broadcasting. It
is easier for people to understand no matter

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where in the world they live.
A woman drives a black convertible over a

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hill. Her hair flows behind her
out of this open roofed vehicle. At

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the top of the hill, the
road bends around sharp rocks. The sea

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crashes below and out above the sea, the sun begins to set. The

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woman parks her car and looks out
over the ocean. The engine of her

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electric powered car is quiet. Its
sound disappears into the wind. Cars are

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everywhere. They take people to remote
places. They take people to work and

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to their homes. Usually these automobiles
are powered by gasoline or petrop but things

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were not always this way, and
they may not always be either. Today's

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Spotlight is on the history and future
of the automobile. People have dreamed about

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creating cars for a very long time. They wanted a way to transport people

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and goods without animals, but it
took a very long time to make one

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that worked. Nicholas Kuno was a
French inventor. He built the first car

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in the late seventeen hundreds. It
used steam to power its engines, and

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it could drive at speeds of about
seven kilometers per hour. But steam engines

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were very large and they took a
lot of work to run horses cost less

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money. They could also transport people
more quickly. Many other inventors tried to

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build a smaller steam powered car that
was easier to use, but cars did

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not become popular until someone invented a
different kind of engine. The engine that

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powers many of the cars you see
on the road today is called an internal

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combustion engine. Many people helped to
create the internal combustion engine, but the

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first person to use it in a
car was Carl Bins in eighteen eighty five.

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Internal combustion engines are smaller than steam
inche they use gasoline to fuel the

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engine, and they can produce more
power to push a car faster. This

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new engine made cars more popular around
the world, but for a long time

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only the very wealthy could buy them. Cars cost a lot of money because

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of the way people made them.
One or two people made each car by

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hand, so cars took a long
time to make. Also, each car

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was different, so they cost a
lot of money to fix. But in

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the early nineteen hundreds, a man
from the United States changed how cars were

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made. His name was Henry Ford. Ford was a car engineer. At

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first, he made cars the traditional
way, but he believed that he could

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make them more easily. He did
this by designing one car model that many

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different people could help him make.
He used simple parts, then his workers

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simply followed the same design plan for
every car. He even made the cars

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all the same color. This let
Ford produce many cars that were all the

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same in a short amount of time. Ford's method changed the way industry works

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aroused the world. He designed a
system that made it easy to produce large

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amounts of his product. He paid
his workers enough money so that they could

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buy his product. Ford made it
possible for many people to buy a car.

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Ford's most popular car was called the
Model Tea. By the nineteen twenties,

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Ford had produced over fifteen million Model
Tea cars. Many other car companies

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also used Ford's methods. Cars began
to cost less money all over the world,

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but the number of cars on the
road also created a problem. Every

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car needed gasoline for fuel burning.
Gasoline worked very well to power cars,

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but it also creates a lot of
pollution. The number of cars made some

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cities difficult to live in. People
exposed to too much vehicle pollution develop problems

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with their breathing. Burning gasoline also
creates carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a

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gas that leads to global climate change. Using gasoline was a great idea when

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people started making cars. There were
not many cars in the beginning, so

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the pollution did not affect much.
But to day there are more than one

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and a half billion cars on the
road. The success of the car has

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turned gasoline use into a danger.
Kate Brunton is a representative from Amber.

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Amber is a Dutch car company that
makes electric self driving vehicles. She spoke

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to the University Network about the problem
of gasoline cars. The problem is that

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owning cars, especially cars deduce fuel
is bet but there is no real choice.

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It is bad for consumers because the
cost of owning most cars is high.

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It is bad for the environment.
It does not work well. Most

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cars spend ninety percent of their time
standing still. Today, many car companies

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are working to make cars that do
not need gasoline. For example, many

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large vehicle manufacturers have begun to produce
electric vehicles Instead of burning fuel, electric

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vehicles store energy batteris. For a
long time, electric vehicles were not very

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popular. They could not go very
far or very fast. This changed in

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two thousand and three with the creation
of the Tesla Motor Company. Tesla worked

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for many years to create an electric
engine that worked as well as gasoline engines,

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and in two thousand and eight they
released the Tesla Roadster. The Roadster

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was just as fast as a gasoline
powered car, and it could travel over

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three hundred kilometers on a single charge. Another newer creation is the hybrid vehicle.

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Hybrid cars use technology from both gasoline
and electric engines. Hybrids have gasoline

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engines like normal cars, but the
engines do not give power to push the

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car forward. Instead, they give
power to the battery. The battery makes

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the car go forward. You do
not need to charge the battery in a

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hybrid car. The gasoline engine provides
the power to the battery, but the

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battery can power the car at low
speeds, so the engine does not have

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to turn on. Hybrid engines are
smaller than gasoline engines, and they require

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less gasoline to operate. Other companies
have been expected perimenting with different fuels.

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For example, it is possible to
fuel a car with hydrogen. Many large

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car companies are researching this new technology. Right now, it is difficult to

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use hydrogen because it does not last
very long. One tank full of hydrogen

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may only be able to fuel a
car for a very short time, But

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people are hopeful that new technologies will
help make hydrogen work in the future.

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There are many possible paths for the
future of the car. How we avel

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has changed many times over the past
hundred years, and it will change again.

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It may be possible that there will
be no single replacement for the internal

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combustion engine in the future. There
may be many different kinds of cars,

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each with different fuels, or people
may use cars less. Either way,

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it is important to continue to invest
in these new technologies. It is important

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not only for the future of the
car, but for the future of humanity.

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Do you own a car, what
kind of engine does it have?

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Do you use buses or trains more
often? Do you use motor bike or

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a bicycle to travel? You can
leave a comment on our website or email

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us at radio at Radio English dot
net. You can also comment on Facebook

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at Facebook dot com, Slash Spotlight
Radio. The writer of this program was

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Dan Christman. The producer was Micchio
Ozaki. The voices you heard were from

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the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program

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and voiced by Spotlight. You can
listen to this program again and read it

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on the internet at www dot Radio
English dot net. This program is called

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the History and Future of the Automobile. You can also get our programs delivered

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directly to your Android or Apple device
through our free official Spotlight English app.

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We hope you can join us again
for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye,