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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 | |
| | | 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 Words | | |
| | | 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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