跟讀練習: Why China is winning the EV war - 通過影片學習英語口語

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In 2024, Ford Motors cut back production on their F -150 Lightning, the electric version of their popular pickup truck.

Sales on the Lightning had tanked, in part because it cost more than its gas -powered counterpart.

This isn't just a problem for Ford.

The average price of a new EV in the U .S is about $55 ,000, making electric cars a hard sell for most U .S consumers at a time

when EV adoption is critical for our climate goals.

Roughly 40 % of the cost to produce an electric vehicle is in the battery.

So in 2023, it was reported that Ford was looking at sites in Virginia

or Michigan for a new battery plant that could help lower its costs.

But there's a catch.

The battery technology you would use is from a company based here, in Fujian Province, China.

That company is CATL, the largest battery maker in the world.

Virginia's governor decided to kill the battery plant proposal in his state because of its links to China.

They are influenced, if not controlled, by the Chinese Communist Party.

Putting Ford's CEO on the defense.

Look, this plant is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford.

them to look elsewhere for a sight.

This battery plant got caught up in a broader trade war between US and China, a reaction to the extraordinary rise of China's electric vehicle market.

They make up over half of all EV sales globally.

and in just a few short years have brought slick and affordable electric cars to the market.

Key to this rise is the electric vehicle battery.

This part of the EV is where China has really come to dominate the global market.

So how did Chinese companies create the world's leading EV battery?

And can U .S automakers make an affordable electric car without it?

The first major reason for why China's companies were able to

develop their EV battery is due to a huge amount of government support.

Roughly 20 years ago, China was on track to become the world's largest importer of oil.

So electrifying its car fleet would help it become more energy independent.

Not to mention a growing air pollution problem in China's cities, in part due to car emissions.

believer in this.

And his sense was that Chinese companies were just never going to be able to compete on internal combustion engine technology.

That's how you get this package of policies that really supported what Chinese government defined as new energy vehicles.

Companies making the cars can get a subsidy whenever they sell a car.

We're also talking about they're getting cheap, like, land leases from the government.

They're getting cheap loans from the state -owned banks.

According billion in the form of subsidies, research spending, and tax breaks to the EV industry.

And starting around 2009, local governments also gave Chinese companies an instant market by contracting them to electrify their bus

and taxi fleets.

The city of Shenzhen's fleet of 16 ,000 buses was electrified by BYD before it became the world's largest EV company.

To get consumers on board, governments offer them generous subsidies too, along with other benefits.

Like discounts on charging, favorable parking, traffic congestion related policies that EVs get a break on.

EVs actually have a different colored license plate even, so it's very visible and so people see, "Oh, that's an EV." they get all the special treatment.

But the battery wasn't very good in the early days.

And so the Chinese government goes in and starts introducing stricter standards of batteries, saying, well, you only qualify for this credit if your battery density reaches this level.

Consumer EV sales in China exploded.

And when it did, the government did something important to protect their own battery industry.

When foreign car companies like GM and Tesla wanted to sell their EVs in China,

the government made a rule that their cars must use Chinese -made batteries for consumer subsidies.

China's central government phased out consumer subsidies in 2022, but the demand had been created.

In 2024, over half of new car sales in China were electric.

- This is like a milestone, because half is a big thing.

The majority of the people are actually prefering AVs over Gas Car Stahl.

The second way Chinese battery companies became so dominant is through the supply chain for the battery components.

The type of battery that typically goes into electric vehicles is called a lithium -ion battery.

The four main components of the battery cell are the cathode, the anode, the electrolyte solution, and a separator.

The cathode is usually packed with nickel, cobalt, and manganese.

The anode uses graphite, and the electrolyte is made up of mostly lithium salts.

Over the past several years, Chinese companies started acquiring ownership stakes in mines around the world where these minerals exist.

"So they're sure that if we control the production, then we control the price." The effect is

that Chinese companies control significant percentages of the world's supply of the minerals needed for batteries.

But where China really controls the supply chain are the steps after mining.

No matter who mines the minerals, China refines a vast majority of them.

This is the step where factories grind down raw mined materials and extract the desired mineral from it.

It's pretty polluting.

That's why you don't see that much refining happening in developed countries.

Chinese plants then also manufacture the vast majority of the four components of the EV batteries,

the cathode, the anode, the electrolyte, and the separator, sell.

Because you already had pretty developed manufacturing for batteries aimed at electronics.

So BYD is actually one of those examples.

They started by producing batteries for electronics in the 90s and then it got into producing EVs.

The U .S was never a battery manufacturing player, historically speaking, a lithium ion.

It was previously Japan and Korea.

China has now superseded both.

China's control of the battery supply chain is so encompassing that

rules say no more than half of a battery's components or minerals could be Chinese sourced to qualify for tax credits, only an estimated 20 percent of EV models qualified.

With their market dominance, Chinese companies have been able to lead the world in battery innovation.

In the past two years, Chinese companies figured out how to avoid using the two most expensive battery minerals: nickel and cobalt.

They did this by innovating on battery technology called lithium iron phosphate, or LFP.

In 2023, CATL announced an LFP battery that could power a car for 370 miles on just a 10 -minute charge.

And BYD has developed their own version of an LFP battery, too.

blade battery.

It's like a very thin, very long blade.

But basically they're saying that by using that shape, it can bring more batteries into the same space.

So in that way, like the same size of a car can travel farther.

Today, LFP batteries are a growing share of all EV batteries, and nearly all of them are manufactured in China.

But not for long.

CATL has built battery plants in Germany and has plans to build one in Hungary for the European auto market.

And Ford ended up finding a home for its CATL battery plant in the town of Marshall, Michigan.

The project has triggered a U .S.

House investigation, but if it goes through, it will be the first LFP plant in the U .S.

All of these factors have made Chinese EV batteries virtually impossible to avoid in the global transition to electric vehicles.

Was there not a viable alternative?

No, there wasn't.

LFP technology is very well developed.

The battery business is a global business.

And there were no alternatives.

There are some concerns about whether China's government support of the EV industry amounts to unfair global competition.

as well as human rights and environmental concerns associated with China's battery supply chain.

The U .S is investing their own government support to build up its battery industry.

Bloomberg estimated it would cost $82 billion for the U .S to meet their own domestic demand by 2030.

100

So it might be possible in the future, but that's no help right now when we desperately need to transition to electric vehicles to wean ourselves from fossil fuels.

101

And U .S automakers are struggling to give consumers affordable options.

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So for now, we'll have to decide whether our desire to keep our distance from China outweighs our goals of going electric.

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本課的詞彙與口語要點

這節 B2 級別的口語課以影片“Why China is winning the EV war”為素材。影片中反覆出現的詞有：battery, Chinese, China, electric, companies。這段影片共有 102 個句子、1403 個單詞可供跟讀。講話部分時長為 8:28。說話人語速自然，每分鐘約 166 個詞，接近日常對話。只有 80% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞，詞彙難度較高。

影片中的重點詞彙

影片中最難的 15 個單詞，附發音和釋義：

單詞	發音	釋義
mineral 名詞	/ˈmɪn.ə.ɹəl/	礦物 /礦物
subsidy 名詞	/ˈsʌbsɪdi/	津貼 /津貼, 補貼 /補貼
lithium 名詞	/ˈlɪθi.əm/	鋰 /鋰
anode 名詞	/ˈæn.oʊd/	負極
cathode 名詞	/ˈkæθ.oʊd/	陰極 /陰極, 正極 /正極
electrify 動詞	/ɪˈlɛktɹɪfaɪ/	電氣化 /電氣化
electrolyte 名詞	/ɪˈlɛk.tɹəˌlaɪt/	電解質 /電解質
cobalt 名詞	/ˈkoʊ.bɔlt/	鈷 /鈷
nickel 名詞	/ˈnɪk.əl/	鎳 /鎳
electronics 名詞	/ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɑ.nɪks/	電子學 /電子學
blade 名詞	/bleɪd/	刃, 刀身
encompass 動詞	/ɪnˈkʌmpəs/	包圍
graphite 名詞	/ˈɡɹæfaɪt/	石墨
importer 名詞	/ɪmˈpɔː(ɹ)tə(ɹ)/	進口商 /進口商
innovate 動詞	/ˈɪn.ə.veɪt/	創新 /創新

影片中出現的短語動詞

單詞	釋義
end up 動詞	到達
figure out 動詞	弄清楚
go through 動詞	通過 /通過

影片中的語法

說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：

結構	影片中的用法
現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事	have brought · has really come · has now superseded
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	was reported · are influenced · was electrified

需要注意的發音

說話人用了 10 次縮略和弱讀形式，例如 they're, wasn't, don't。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。

“th” 音: lithium /ˈlɪθi.əm/, cathode /ˈkæθ.oʊd/
“sh” 和 “zh” 音: emission /ɪˈmɪʃ.ən/, adoption /əˈdɑp.ʃən/, pollution /pəˈluʃən/
長單詞——注意重音位置: electrify /ɪˈlɛktɹɪfaɪ/, electrolyte /ɪˈlɛk.tɹəˌlaɪt/, separator /ˈsɛpəˌɹeɪtəɹ/, electronics /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɑ.nɪks/, favourable /ˈfeɪv(ə)ɹəbəl/

中文母語者容易讀錯的音：

/v/ — 不要讀成 /w/，上齒輕觸下唇: innovate /ˈɪn.ə.veɪt/, favourable /ˈfeɪv(ə)ɹəbəl/, believer /bɪˈlivɚ/, viable /ˈvaɪəbəl/
詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚，後面不要加母音: anode /ˈæn.oʊd/, cathode /ˈkæθ.oʊd/, electrolyte /ɪˈlɛk.tɹəˌlaɪt/, cobalt /ˈkoʊ.bɔlt/, electronics /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɑ.nɪks/
/r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: mineral /ˈmɪn.ə.ɹəl/, electrify /ɪˈlɛktɹɪfaɪ/, electrolyte /ɪˈlɛk.tɹəˌlaɪt/, electronics /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɑ.nɪks/, favourable /ˈfeɪv(ə)ɹəbəl/

如何用這段影片練習

先完整聽一遍影片，不要開口，記下不認識的單詞。
先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀，熟練之後再回到正常速度。
錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比，特別注意 mineral, subsidy, lithium 這類單詞。

什麼是跟讀法？

跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟讀法: 閱讀完整分步指南 →

跟讀練習: Why China is winning the EV war - 通過影片學習英語口語

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