【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】[解析] 30-32 Nobody really knows exactly who invented the automobile: it appeared towards the end of the 1800s after numerous prototypes and experiments. What is certain is that it was the Ford Motor Company who pioneered its modern manufacture. (30) {{U}}The invention of the production line process was the real beginning of mass industry as we know it today.{{/U}} The same model being performed over and again, workers in huge factories having one simple job to do repetitively: it seems modern industry has not changed very much since the first Ford factory was opened at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the car industry has changed a lot. These days, the massive factories are no longer in the United States or Western Europe, but in South America, India and Asia. (31) {{U}}The car companies themselves are no longer owned by a few rich men sitting in boardrooms in Detroit but are owned by multinational companies.{{/U}} Most car factories arc now clean, quiet places, where the chatter of human workers has been replaced by the quiet hum of robots efficiently going about their business, never threatening to take industrial action. The cars themselves--now all designed by computers, engineers and technicians rather than by inspired artists or designers--resemble each other. (32) {{U}}The car industry, more than being just the starting point of modern industrial capitalism, is in fact a pattern of that system's development.{{/U}} Q: What does the invention of the production line process stand for? [听前预测] 选项中均含有automobile industry，推段本题与汽车工业有关。 [答案解析] 文中提到生产线的发明代表着大规模生产的开始。故选D)项。