Part 3. A motor city breakthrough: the electric car.
Keywords.

electric car, zero tailpipe emissions, battery.
Vocabulary.

sag, overpass, combustion, diesel fuel, tailpipe, ignition, piston, surge, hurdle, Impact.
A. You're going to hear a report about general motors, zero emission car. Listen carefully and then complete the following chart with the information you hear.
The American auto industry has been looking for ways to rescue its sagging bottom line.
Better design and better quality are contributing to the beginning of a turnaround, but long-term success is going to mean major changes for the entire industry.
Ensuring that success involves planning for an entirely new type of automobile, one powered by electricity.
The electric car is still some distance down the road.
It's rush hour in Detroit, and the interstate freeway, I-94, is jammed with cars heading for home after another workday in the city.
Looking down on the freeway from an overpass, one sees cars and trucks of every size, shape and color.
But for all of their differences, these vehicles do have something in common, they're all powered by an internal combustion engine running on gasoline or diesel fuel.
But as automobile-related pollution grows worse in major urban areas, governmental officials and environmentalists are pushing automobile manufacturers to design vehicles powered by electricity.
You see, electric cars have absolutely zero tailpipe emissions.
In Detroit, the big three US car companies have spent millions researching electric vehicles.
Chrysler has an electric version of its popular minivan, and Ford, a small electric wagon.
But none has attracted as much attention as General Motor's experimental electric car called the Impact.
That's the sound of the Impact starting. There's no standard auto ignition. You simply turn the key and push a button to turn on the electricity.
As the Impact accelerates, there are no pumping pistons, just a surge of electric power.
It's a sleek, aerodynamic, two-seat sports car. It's both smooth and quiet. All you hear is wind whistling past and the sound of tires on the pavement.
We're doing about 46 miles an hour. We're up to 60 now and going to 65. Now we'll slow down a little bit. She's electronically limited at 75.
But as exciting and appealing as the Impact seems, there are still major technological hurdles engineers need to clear before such a car becomes available to the general public.
The main problem is with the batteries. They're heavy, and the distance a vehicle can travel between overnight chargings is limited.
The biggest limitation of the battery that we have now is the amount of energy that it can store.
The battery weighs 870 pounds. It can only store the energy equivalent of about one and a half gallons of gasoline.
In addition to the US based car companies, automakers around the world are working on electric-vehicle research.
All are searching for the technology which will lead to a better electric-car battery.