Electric cars may seem like a recent invention, but they’ve been around for years. In the early 1900s, there were more electric cars on the road than there were petrol（汽油）cars. At that time, petrol was expensive compared with other fuels（燃料）. When petrol prices dropped and new technologies were developed, electric cars went out of fashion. Instead, petrol cars became more popular because they could travel longer distances without stopping.

During the 20th century, petrol cars got bigger, heavier and faster. They needed more fuel, and it caused more air pollution. For years, car makers didn’t worry about pollution. They didn’t worry about the amount of petrol cars’ use, either. But when people began to realize that there was not enough oil on the earth, they asked car makers to produce more efficient（高效能的）and less polluting cars.

One method of solving the problem was a “hybrid” car（混合动力车）, one that ran partly on petrol and partly on electricity. Hybrid cars became popular in the 2000s when petrol prices went up and the prices of hybrid cars went down.

An all-electric car uses no petrol. The problem, however, is that car batteries（电池）need to be recharged（再充电）. That makes electric cars not so useful for long journeys.

Many people are not pleased with it. The government and car makers are working together to develop safe, cheap and useful electric cars. When people have these cars in the future, a petrol station may be a thing of the past.

【小题1】Electric cars went out of fashion because ________.

A．petrol oil was more expensive	B．new technologies were developed
C．they were more popular than petrol cars	D．they were invented recently

【小题2】Petrol cars ________.

A．can protect the environment	B．can cause less pollution
C．can save more petrol oil	D．need more fuel than electric cars

【小题3】What kind of cars are more efficient and less polluting?

A．Petrol cars.

B．Electric cars.

C．Hybrid cars.

D．Shared cars.

【小题4】The fourth paragraph mainly tells us ________.

A．all-electric cars don’t need petrol	B．all-electric cars have a long history
C．all-electric cars can travel long distances	D．all-electric cars don’t use batteries

【小题5】From the passage, we can infer（推断）________.

A．all-electric cars will use less petrol oil

B．electric cars will take the place of petrol cars

C．more petrol stations will be set up in the future

D．there will be more and more petrol cars in the future