考研英语阅读例题Highly charged motoring负重前行.docVIP

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 a