考研英语阅读例题：Highly charged motoring负重前行

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Highly charged motoring 负重前行 [2010.10.07] The Economist

Electric cars have come and gone over the years. Usually an oil crisis has given them a boost; this time it is a combination of oil prices, fears about energy security and climate change.

Now the big car firms are pushing all-electric cars for the mass market. At the Paris Motor Show this week they unveiled electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Some go on sale in the next few months.

This represents a huge leap forward for the industry, but the showroom patter will be misleading, for two reasons. First, although electric cars are nippy, stylish and as easy to drive as conventional vehicles, electric motoring has some distinct disadvantages. Second, they are not really as green as their promoters claim.

The idea of recharging an electric car at home for only a few dollars and never again having to visit a filling station is enticing. For most journeys, the limitations of battery capacity are irrelevant. As salesmen will be quick to point out, 99% of the time people do only short runs—the daily commute, trips to the shops and to pick up the children—all of which are well within the range of most electric cars.

But that final 1% of journeys presumably includes the summer holiday when people pile into the car and head off for the coast. Hopping on the train laden with suitcases and children may not be an attractive alternative. And even the relatively short ranges that salesmen advertise may be optimistic. On a cold, wet night when lots of electrical systems are running and the vehicle is laden with passengers and luggage, a car may lose around a third of its supposed range.

And what of electric cars’ environmental credentials? Electric cars are being hugely subsidised by taxpayers—￡5,000 ($7,940) in Britain and up to $7,500 in America—on the ground that they are zero-emission vehicles. Makers of electric cars claim that this is an efficient way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Road transport accounts for a tenth of such emissions worldwide; the sorts of biofuels currently in use are not much greener than petrol; and next-generation biofuels are proving slow to come to the market.

Although electric cars may not themselves produce greenhouse gases, generating the electricity they use does. How green they are depends on the fuel mix at the power plants in the country in which they are driven. An electric car in Britain today, for instance, produces around 20% less in CO2 emissions than a car with a petrol engine. Even if the generating mix gets greener, electric vehicles are so expensive to produce, that they will still be a relatively costly way of abating CO2 emissions.

The only efficient way to cut greenhouse-gas emissions is to impose a carbon tax. If electric cars are a good way of reducing emissions, a carbon tax will enable them to flourish. Taxes, of course, are not as popular as subsidies. But subsidies are almost always a waste of public resources. At this particular time, throwing more taxpayers’ money at the car industry seems a daft thing to do.

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考研词汇

combination[?kɑmb??ne??n] n.①结合，联合，合并；②化合（物）

distinct[d??st??kt］a.①清楚的，明显的；②（from）截然不同的

［真题例句］ The BBC “ain

t broke”, they say, by which they mean it is not broken

(as distinct (②) from the word ‘broke’, meaning having no money), so why bother to change it?［1996年阅读2］

［例句精译］ 他们说英国广播公司“没有破产”，他们的意思是说它没有垮掉（垮掉与“一文不名”含义不同，“一文不名”指没有资金），那为什么还要自找麻烦去改变它呢？

irrelevant[??r?l?v?nt］a.不相关的

［真题例句］ But the human mind can glimpse a rapidly changing scene and immediately disregard the 98 percent that is irrelevant, instantaneously focusing on the monkey at the side of a winding forest road or the single suspicious face in a big crowd.［2002年阅读2］

［例句精译］ 但是人的大脑能够扫描一个快速变化的场景，迅速排除98%的不相干的物体，立即聚焦于森林中婉蜒道路旁的一只猴子，或者人群中的一张可疑的脸。

presumably [pri?zju:m?bli］ad.推测起来，大概

［真题例句］ Naturally he will try to borrow money at a low (49：rate) of interest, but loans of this kind are not (50：frequently) obtainable.［2000年完形］

(50) ［A］ genuinely［B］ obviously［C］ presumably［D］ frequently

［例句精译］ 他自然会设法寻找低息贷款．然而这类贷款常常是不容易弄到的。

(50) ［A］ 真诚地［B］ 明显地［C］ 推测起来［D］ 常常，频繁地

efficient[??f???nt]a.①有效的，效率高的；②有能力的，能胜任的

［真题例句］ At the same time these computers record which hours are busiest and which employees are the most efficient (①), allowing personnel and staffing assignments to be made accordingly.［1994年阅读2］

［例句精译］ 同时这些计算机记录哪些时间段是高峰，哪些员工工作效率最高，进而就能

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对人员分配进行相应的调整。

flourish [?fl?r??］v.繁荣，茂盛，兴旺

［真题例句］ It’s theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail.［2003年阅读3］

［例句精译］ 这种理论得到了多数经济学家的认同，但在实际操作中，它使铁路公司获得了一个决定谁败谁荣的权利。

背景常识介绍

近几年，“绿色交通”作为一个全新的理念越来越被人们所关注，其倡导的低能耗、低污染、高效率的城市交通体系其本质是在满足人们的交通需求的同时，维持城市可持续发展，保证环境、经济与社会的永续性。在新能源汽车中，由于电动车具有无废气排放，噪音污染小的特点，已经成为未来绿色交通发展的必然趋势，但冷静思考，不难看出目前电动汽车行业仍存在诸多问题。

参考译文

这些年来，电动汽车时而“时兴”时而“失宠”。通常，是石油危机给他带来机遇，但这一次是高油价，能源安全和气候变化的综合作用。

现在，主流汽车制造商们正在全力推进纯电动汽车的大众市场。就本周的巴黎汽车展上，发布了各种车型和大小的电动汽车，其中一些将在接下来的几个月内上市销售。

这些表明了电动汽车行业巨大的跳跃式进展，但展示厅的宣传会是一种误导，原因有二：首先，尽管电动汽车灵巧新潮，并同传统汽车一样易于驾驶，但驾驶电动汽车仍有一些特有的缺点；其次，电动汽车并不像其拥护者所宣称的那样绿色环保。

一种诱人的概念是，只用花费几个美元就可以在家为电动汽车充电，从此再也不用去加油站 了。而对于大多数旅程而言，是不用考虑电池的容量限制的。正如销售员立马指出的那样，人们99%的时间都只是短途需求，比如日常的上下班，购物，接送孩子等等，这些都完全在绝大多数电动汽车的行程范围之内。

但是这1%的旅程很可能就包括夏日假期——这个人人都挤进汽车，奔向海滩的美好时刻。如果这时让人们都改为背负行李，带着孩子跳上火车，肯能就不那么美好了吧。即使是销售员口中所指的较短旅程可能也只是某种乐观的愿望。设想一个阴冷的雨夜，当车内的所有电气设施都要使用的情况下，一个满载乘客和行李的电动汽车，很可能要丧失约三分之一的设计行程。

那么电动汽车的环保优势又是怎样呢？电动汽车由于是零排放，因此获得了纳税人的巨额补

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贴，在英国约5,000英镑（7,940美元），而美国要7,500美元。电动汽车的制造商们宣称，这是减少温室气体排放的有效措施。道路交通占全球此类排放的十分之一，目前使用的生物燃料并不比汽油环保多少，而下一代的生物燃料进入市场已确定缓慢。

虽然电动汽车自身并不产生温室气体的排放，但生产电力还是要排放的。因此电动汽车的环保程度还是要取决于所在国家发电厂的原料组合情况。比如在英国，一辆电动汽车产生的CO2 排放要比汽油引擎汽车少约20%。但即使发电厂的燃料使用更加环保了，考虑到高昂的制造成本，电动汽车仍然是一种相对昂贵的减少CO2排放的方式。

减少温室气体排放的唯一有效方式是征收碳税。如果电动汽车是降低排放的一种好方式，碳税的征收将会使其繁荣。征税当然不像补贴那样受人欢迎，但补贴总是会浪费公共资源。在目前这个特殊时刻，将更多纳税人的钱投到汽车行业似乎并不是一个明智的做法.

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