full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Daniel Sperling and Gil Tal: The surprisingly long history of electric cars

Unscramble the Blue Letters

At this point, car companies had spent decades investing in internal combustion egenins without devoting any resources to solving the century-old battery prlebom. But other companies were developing iscrnieangly efficient batteries to power a new wave of portable electronics. By the 1990s, energy dense ncekil metal hydride batteries were on the makret, soon followed by lithium-ion batteries. Alongside regulatory mntadeas by California to rducee smog, these innovations sparked a small wave of new electric vehicles, including hybrid cars. Hybrids aren’t true electric vehicles; their nickel metal hydride batteries are only used to optimize the efficiency of gas-burning engines. But in 2008, Tesla Motors went further, grabbing the attention of consumers, automakers, and regulators with its lithium-ion-powered Roadster. This purely electric vehicle could tarevl more than 320 klioemetrs on a snigle charge, almost doubling the previous record.

Open Cloze

At this point, car companies had spent decades investing in internal combustion _______ without devoting any resources to solving the century-old battery _______. But other companies were developing ____________ efficient batteries to power a new wave of portable electronics. By the 1990s, energy dense ______ metal hydride batteries were on the ______, soon followed by lithium-ion batteries. Alongside regulatory ________ by California to ______ smog, these innovations sparked a small wave of new electric vehicles, including hybrid cars. Hybrids aren’t true electric vehicles; their nickel metal hydride batteries are only used to optimize the efficiency of gas-burning engines. But in 2008, Tesla Motors went further, grabbing the attention of consumers, automakers, and regulators with its lithium-ion-powered Roadster. This purely electric vehicle could ______ more than 320 __________ on a ______ charge, almost doubling the previous record.

Solution

  1. travel
  2. reduce
  3. increasingly
  4. mandates
  5. market
  6. nickel
  7. engines
  8. kilometers
  9. single
  10. problem

Original Text

At this point, car companies had spent decades investing in internal combustion engines without devoting any resources to solving the century-old battery problem. But other companies were developing increasingly efficient batteries to power a new wave of portable electronics. By the 1990s, energy dense nickel metal hydride batteries were on the market, soon followed by lithium-ion batteries. Alongside regulatory mandates by California to reduce smog, these innovations sparked a small wave of new electric vehicles, including hybrid cars. Hybrids aren’t true electric vehicles; their nickel metal hydride batteries are only used to optimize the efficiency of gas-burning engines. But in 2008, Tesla Motors went further, grabbing the attention of consumers, automakers, and regulators with its lithium-ion-powered Roadster. This purely electric vehicle could travel more than 320 kilometers on a single charge, almost doubling the previous record.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
electric vehicles 6
internal combustion 4
combustion engines 4
electric cars 3
electric vehicle 2
nickel metal 2
metal hydride 2
hydride batteries 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
internal combustion engines 4
nickel metal hydride 2
metal hydride batteries 2

ngrams of length 4

collocation frequency
nickel metal hydride batteries 2

Important Words

  1. attention
  2. automakers
  3. batteries
  4. battery
  5. california
  6. car
  7. cars
  8. charge
  9. combustion
  10. companies
  11. consumers
  12. decades
  13. dense
  14. developing
  15. devoting
  16. doubling
  17. efficiency
  18. efficient
  19. electric
  20. electronics
  21. energy
  22. engines
  23. grabbing
  24. hybrid
  25. hybrids
  26. hydride
  27. including
  28. increasingly
  29. innovations
  30. internal
  31. investing
  32. kilometers
  33. mandates
  34. market
  35. metal
  36. motors
  37. nickel
  38. optimize
  39. point
  40. portable
  41. power
  42. previous
  43. problem
  44. purely
  45. record
  46. reduce
  47. regulators
  48. regulatory
  49. resources
  50. roadster
  51. single
  52. small
  53. smog
  54. solving
  55. sparked
  56. spent
  57. tesla
  58. travel
  59. true
  60. vehicle
  61. vehicles
  62. wave