单选题 The Warranty Holdings Group, a European leader in mechanical breakdown insurance and a researcher and commentator on trends in motoring, says that the motorists' world 20 years from now will be marked by more cars, more choice and more technology. Built-in safety features will increase and will include night-vision and collision-avoidance system, and monitoring devices to stop drivers falling asleep at the wheel.
A growth in tele-working and home shopping should cut the numbers of trips in a car made by most motorists and "fun" sports cars will become popular as private motoring becomes more recreational in nature.
The survey results show that despite years of research into alternative fuel sources for vehicles, no clear winner has emerged for a replacement for the conventional petrol-engined car. Gas and electricity are the best possibilities, with Toyota's design division in Japan claiming it already has an electric car that will drive up to 250km on a single charge.
However, while electric and "hybrid" powered vehicles will be far more in evidence in the future, it will take a major technological breakthrough to steer the car industry away from its current path of gradual improvements to the petrol-driven internal combustion engine.
Professor Garel Rhys, of the Cardiff Business School in Wales, says engine fuel injection systems of the future will be far more frugal than anything that exists at the moment. "It will be like putting a pipette of petrol into the cylinders, rather than just throwing it in by the bucket load, which is almost what we do at the moment when you compare it with what could be possible. "
Some environmentalists point to the Twingo, the small car developed by France's Renault company, to show that what could be achieved by the world's car industry if it moved away from a trend towards bigger and more powerful cars and radically cut the fuel consumption of its products. Public opinion polls in many countries show motorists wanting access to this kind of environmentally-aware car.
A prototype environmental car, the SmILE (smaller, intelligent, lighten. efficient) has been put together by the environmental group Greenpeace. The group hopes the concept will catch on. It depends heavily on supercharging or forcing fuel mixture into the cylinders at higher than normal pressure. Some experts say this is a good way to extract high performance and high fuel efficiency from small engines.
Cutting the fuel consumption has had no negative effect on the handling or performance of the car, according to the designers. Top speed, flexibility and acceleration from the engine is as good or better than the original Twingo. They say the technology used to create the Twingo SmILE could just as easily be used on other brands of car.
What remains to be seen is whether the enthusiasm of environmental designers catches on with the dollar-driven international car industry, and whether motorists back up with their chequebooks their desire for "greener" cars.

单选题 Which of the following is true about the motorists' world 20 years from now?
A. The number of cars will reduce as more people work and shop at home.
B. People will only use cars for recreational purposes.
C. Cars will be better equipped to enhance bigger safety.
D. "Fun" sports cars will be the mainstream of car industry.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[解析] 细节题。根据文章第一段，未来20年汽车世界的特点是：汽车数量更多、选择范围更广和技术更加先进，车内安全特征将会增加，其中包括夜视和防碰撞系统以及防止司机开车时睡觉的监控装置。C与此吻合，A意思相反；根据第二段，远距离电脑办公和家庭购物的兴起将可能减少大多数开车者驾车出行的次数，随着个人驾车本质上更具消遣性，“娱乐性”跑车将更受欢迎，但这不意味着人们用车只是为了娱乐；跑车会更受欢迎，但并非将成为汽车业的主流，所B和D都不准确。

单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that ______.
A. it is unlikely that today's petrol-driven car will be a thing of the past in the near future
B. electricity will soon be the alternative fuel source as Toyota has succeeded in designing an electric car
C. the car industry has attempted to make a breakthrough in improving the petrol-driven engine but failed
D. the car industry is now trying to economize its current engine fuel injection systems and make the cars more powerful

【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 推断题。根据第三、四段，尽管对汽车替代性燃料的研究进行了多年，大功告成者到现在还没有出现，传统的汽油汽车还没有找到替代品。尽管电动汽车和“混合型”动力机车在未来是极为可行的事，但是要使汽车工业改头换面，不再走逐步改进汽油内燃机的老路，还需要在技术上有重大突破。由此可推断，汽油发动机汽车在近期成为过眼烟云仍不太可能．所以选A。文章中虽然说丰田公司已研制出充电一次就能行驶多达250公里的电动汽车，但这并不意味着电很快就能替代汽油，所以B不对；文章中说汽车工业改头换面，不再走逐步改进汽油内燃机的老路，还需要在技术上有重大突破，并非汽车公司曾努力取得突破但失败了，所以也排除C；汽车现在的注油方式仍然是大量注入，所以D也不对。