WEBVTT

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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

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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

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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,