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Business
Words in the News
Friday 03 August 2001
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report
then find explanations of difficult words below.
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The car industry's hydrogen powered future
Summary: The car industry of the future will be powered by hydrogen, according to a new report from the Washington-based environmental research organisation The World Watch Institute.
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The
News 
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The
19th century science fiction writer Jules Verne envisaged
a civilisation powered by hydrogen - the lightest and most abundant
substance in the universe. According to the World Watch Institute's
new report, we'll be able to start buying in to Verne's vision
in two years time, when Toyota plans to start selling its hydrogen-powered
car on the open market. As the report makes clear, Toyota
is just one of many companies investing in a hydrogen future.
Daimler-Benz is committing over a billion dollars over
ten years, and has buses which are nearly ready for commercial
release; General Motors aims to begin mass production
of hydrogen cars in 2010; oil giants Shell, BP and ExxonMobil
are all involved in developing the fuel cells which will
power the hydrogen vehicles. Fuel cells are silent, efficient
and pollution-free - potentially a vast improvement on the internal
combustion engine. But until a few years ago, scientists were
starved of the funds to develop the elegant concept into
reality. Now that the money is there, fuel cells are rapidly
becoming lighter, cheaper and more practical.
Richard
Black, BBC, London
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The
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envisaged
imagined as something that will possibly happen in the future
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abundant
something which is abundant is present in large quantities
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on the open market
if something is on the open market then it is available for all people to buy
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is committing
if you commit money to something then you use it for this particular purpose
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commercial release
to be made available for people to buy for the first time
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aims
if you aim to do something, you plan or hope to achieve it
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mass production
to produce things in very large numbers
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oil giants
oil giants - very large international oil companies
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fuel cells
a device which uses energy from heat, light or a chemical like hydrogen to produce power.
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starved of the funds
if something , for example scientific research, is starved of funds, then it does not receive enough money to do the job properly
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