美国国家公共电台 NPR With Blackouts, California's Electric Car Owners Are Finding New Ways To Charge Up

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

About half of all the electric cars in the country are owned in California, and they're at the center of what's becoming a statewide struggle for electric power. Thousands of customers are being cut off the grid¹ on a regular basis, and it's even worse during the state's wildfire season. But as NPR's Vanessa Romo reports, some electric car owners are finding new ways to power up.

VANESSA ROMO, BYLINE²: The call from the city came at 4 in the morning. The Getty Fire on the west side of LA was spreading. It'd gotten too close to Mandeville Canyon³, the hillside neighborhood where Lawrence Levee lives. He had to evacuate⁵.

LAWRENCE LEVEE: I left without too much of anything - just basically meds. And I wasn't thinking about a whole bunch of clothes or anything like that.

ROMO: Something else he didn't have to think about - his electric Chevy Bolt.

LEVEE: I had a half a tank.

ROMO: That was more than enough power to get him out of danger.

LEVEE: I drove around town that day quite a bit and then went over to the Valley, and I had about 25 miles left in the tank by the time I got there.

ROMO: That's when he finally had to think about recharging. He usually plugs into a solar-powered battery in his garage, but that was impossible this time. Then he remembered a nearby public charger.

LEVEE: But it was broken.

ROMO: And with that, range anxiety set in. If he didn't plug in soon, he'd be stranded⁶. It's a problem a lot of electric car owners are facing as blackouts are becoming more and more frequent. Frustrated⁷, Levee turned to a trusty Facebook group for Bolt owners. Lately, they've got a lot to say about what they're doing during the blackouts. But Levee wanted to know, where are the cheap charging stations? Turns out there was one at a mall a few miles away.

LEVEE: Free completely - didn't pay a dime⁸.

ROMO: Levee's only owned the car for eight months, and already he says he'll never go back. Despite the inconvenience and the evacuations in his future, he's confident he'll always be able to charge his car because California's got more public charging stations than any state - about 18,000 of them.

CLARENCE DOLD: Pop the hood⁴.

ROMO: For Clarence Dold, the Kincade Fire in Santa Rosa where he lives presented a different kind of challenge. He hasn't been evacuated⁹, but he has lost power three times in the last month. The longest stretch lasted four days. But unlike Levee, who found himself in a bit of a jam driving the electric car, Dold's 2013 Nissan Leaf was kind of a lifesaver - or light-saver. He used the car like a generator¹⁰ to power the house.

DOLD: So this is just like you would do jumping a car to get it started 'cause you left your lights on or something.

ROMO: Standing¹¹ in the garage of the ranch¹² house, he shows me how he runs jumper cables from the Leaf's battery to an inverter, a box about the size of a dictionary that changes DC power to AC. The rest he does with heavy-duty extension cords that he runs into the main rooms of the house. One goes to the fridge. The whole thing cost about 200 bucks¹³, a fraction of the price of a generator. Those can run up into the thousands.

DOLD: So we were watching TV and had a cold fridge and couple of lights. And things seemed normal.

ROMO: Every few hours, Dold says, he'd climb into the small car to check the battery just to make sure the house wasn't depleting¹⁴ the car of too much power. If it was, he'd disconnect the cables and drive five miles away to recharge.

DOLD: The power outages are not over a broad area. This isn't like a hurricane hitting Florida.

ROMO: That whole time, the rest of the neighborhood was a cacophony¹⁵ of gas and electric generators¹⁶. Meanwhile, his Nissan Leaf was virtually silent. For Dold and other enterprising electric car owners like him, that's the secret sauce to surviving a blackout.

Vanessa Romo, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF DYALLA'S "SUNDOWN")

1 grid   

n.高压输电线路网；地图坐标方格；格栅

参考例句：

• In this application,the carrier is used to encapsulate the grid.在这种情况下，要用载体把格栅密封起来。
• Modern gauges consist of metal foil in the form of a grid.现代应变仪则由网格形式的金属片组成。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

4 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

5 evacuate   

v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便

参考例句：

• We must evacuate those soldiers at once!我们必须立即撤出这些士兵！
• They were planning to evacuate the seventy American officials still in the country.他们正计划转移仍滞留在该国的70名美国官员。

6 stranded   

a.搁浅的，进退两难的

参考例句：

• He was stranded in a strange city without money. 他流落在一个陌生的城市里， 身无分文，一筹莫展。
• I was stranded in the strange town without money or friends. 我困在那陌生的城市，既没有钱，又没有朋友。

7 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 dime   

n.（指美国、加拿大的钱币）一角

参考例句：

• A dime is a tenth of a dollar.一角银币是十分之一美元。
• The liberty torch is on the back of the dime.自由火炬在一角硬币的反面。

9 evacuated   

撤退者的

参考例句：

• Police evacuated nearby buildings. 警方已将附近大楼的居民疏散。
• The fireman evacuated the guests from the burning hotel. 消防队员把客人们从燃烧着的旅馆中撤出来。

10 generator   

n.发电机，发生器

参考例句：

• All the while the giant generator poured out its power.巨大的发电机一刻不停地发出电力。
• This is an alternating current generator.这是一台交流发电机。

11 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

12 ranch   

n.大牧场，大农场

参考例句：

• He went to work on a ranch.他去一个大农场干活。
• The ranch is in the middle of a large plateau.该牧场位于一个辽阔高原的中部。

13 bucks   

n.雄鹿( buck的名词复数 )；钱；（英国十九世纪初的）花花公子；（用于某些表达方式）责任v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的第三人称单数 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃

参考例句：

• They cost ten bucks. 这些值十元钱。
• They are hunting for bucks. 他们正在猎雄兔。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 depleting   

使大大的减少，使空虚( deplete的现在分词 )； 耗尽，使枯竭

参考例句：

• Regulations are outlawing certain refrigerants, such as chlorofluorocarbons, which contain ozone-depleting chemicals. 随后出台的政策禁用了部分制冷剂，如破坏臭氧层的氟氯碳化合物。
• Aging, being a series of continual losses, can be keenly depleting. 老龄化，作为一个系列的连续亏损，可以清楚地消耗。

15 cacophony   

n.刺耳的声音

参考例句：

• All around was bubbling a cacophony of voices.周围人声嘈杂。
• The drivers behind him honked,and the cacophony grew louder.后面的司机还在按喇叭，且那刺耳的声音越来越大。

16 generators   

n.发电机，发生器( generator的名词复数 )；电力公司

参考例句：

• The factory's emergency generators were used during the power cut. 工厂应急发电机在停电期间用上了。
• Power can be fed from wind generators into the electricity grid system. 电力可以从风力发电机流入输电网。 来自《简明英汉词典》