【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】[听力原文] 1-5
(W=Hostess M=Chris Paine)
W: Welcome to NOW on PBS. I can feel the traffic right here. Many of us are already trying to help: living closer to work, taking public transit where possible, or perhaps buying a hybrid. Hybrids can be a cool, efficient alternative, but in with the electric motor is still a gasoline powered one, with a tailpipe. [1] About ten years ago, some big car Companies started producing electric cars, quite a lot of them. So where are they now? Dead, by and large. Killed by their own creators in a stunning display of power politics and spin. That's the view of a provocative new documentary. Chris Paine's film is called "Who Killed the Electric Car". Chris, good to meet you.
M: You too.
W: I guess you're presenting us here with a whodunit?
M: Yes, a bit of mystery. It's a... "Who Killed The Electric Car" is about why the only kind of cars that we can drive run on oil. And for a while, there was a terrific alternative, a pure electric car, mostly in California. And then they all disappeared.
W: But you know it didn't just happen that these cars became available. It had something to do with a marriage, of good, old American innovation both from the car manufacturers' point of view and also in terms of air quality regulation.
M: [2] Well, you know, Los Angeles has got Very bad air quality problems. But...
W: You think?
M: Yeah. It was really bad in the 70s when I was growing up, and then in the 90s...80s and 90s, it really began to increase too, because there's so many people moving to Los Angeles. And California was looking at like one in four kids had lung lesions and cancer and all these things were coming up. So, they said, "We have to do something." And just then General Motors had built an electric car, and they had one at the L.A. Auto Show. And the regulators said, "Oh, you guys can do an electric car."
W: They required these electric cars. They passed these rules in 1990 that by 1998 about two percent of these cars would have to be all electric, and by the year 2003, what would it be up to, about ten percent?
M: Ten percent. Yeah. So this is as big innovation as, for example, the catalytic converter that California also led the nation on. And New York and Massachusetts and many, many states said, "Hey, this is a good idea, electric cars. Let's see what happens in California."
W: Well, you've got some experience behind the wheel of one these EV1's. Does it go?
M: Oh, I mean, most people think the electric car—you know, golf carts or something for a little old lady, like it was in 1900. [3] But these modem, electric cars, I sat in an EV1, and you step on the accelerator. And she—whoo—incredibly fast. And almost totally quiet, just like a spaceship taking off. And I think at that moment, the first time I drove in the electric car, I was hooked. Very convenient. You just plugged it in at home overnight, charged the car. And then one day, the car was taken away.
W: It was actually taken away from you.
M: Well, not exactly like that. They leased the cars, so you knew you'd have to give the car back at a certain point.
W: You couldn't buy one if you wanted to buy one.
M: [4] No. No, what you said, "Hey, OK, my lease is up." We said, "What's the cost to buy the car out?" They go, "Oh, no option. We take the car back." "No option? I wanna keep my car." "No, you can't have it." So everybody who had these electric cars were mostly people who really wanted to keep them. And they said, "No, we need the cars back."
W: You mean really a lot of passion about a stupid car?
M: I know. I never even liked cars until this EV1 electric car. This was something special.
W: So, cut hard to this, people who love their EV1 electric cars so much that when they're taken away, they stage a mock funeral for their dearly beloved, but dearly departed cars. Let's take a look.
M: Only in Los Angeles would you have a funeral for a car, a bunch of celebrities and so forth. But when you started going in to it, you began to realize that something really had happened—that it was foul play.
W: Foul play implicated in the death of these cars.
M: Well, because the cars represent something bigger than cars, right? This is a...The idea of the film is why is it so hard for us to get off of oil. Why even when you have an electric car can't they be given a real chance in the marketplace? [5] And my experience is that almost no one knew about these electric cars. So that's why we wanted to make the film to let people know that it really was an option. And whenever you have big change, there's big forces that say, "No, no, no, we don't want the change." And I think that's a good reason to make a film.
W: OK. We'll be right back with Chris Paine and his newest film "Who Killed the Electric Car". Don't go away.
[考点] 本题的设题点在对话问答处。
[精析] 对话中电影导演佩恩说《谁消灭了电动车》这部电影是关于为什么我们一开始只有燃油汽车，后来，在许多城市电动车替代了燃油汽车，再后来电动车又都消失了的事情。综合理解可知这部电影与电动车产生和消失的变化过程有关，故选B。