下のスクリプトは事前提出されたものですので、ビデオの音声とは一部異なる場合があります。

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What Did You Do for Our Planet Today?

SASAKI, Tomomi (Sendai National College of Technology, Hirose Campus)

Do you have a dream? I do. My dream is to spread clean energy cars around the world. Especially, I pay much attention to electric vehicles (EV). There are some reasons why I am interested in EV. Have you ever seen an EV? I think many people associate the EV with a hybrid car. Nowadays, Japanese auto majors haven’t yet started the mass production system of EV. I’ll explain it later.

Three years ago, I came across an electric vehicle for competition. One of our school laboratory studies was about it, and they actually tried to take part in EV running competition. A driver who weighs light was needed to reduce the total load. They were looking for a person who was short and light, but my department was largely composed of male students. So, I was asked to be the driver of EV when I was a second-year student. At that time, I simply accepted it without a deep thought, because I didn’t know about any difficulties with it. After real practicing, however, my impression of a car had been completely changed. The EV was in the shape of a long and narrow rugby ball and was covered with cowling to reduce the air resistance. Its driver usually gets on it with a fully reclining back and must keep this posture for two hours. I realized how hard it was for me right after sitting down in the driver’s seat. But the EV started to run. It dispelled my dismal. I switched its breaker and turned the accelerator. And the EV started to move easily. The sound was very quiet. I couldn’t believe that I was in the running car. I thought that it would be a future car! That was my first impression of an EV.

After that, I couldn’t help enjoying driving it. I have taken part in the EV running competitions as a driver for three years. When I became the fourth grade student, I applied for an assignment to join this laboratory. I have been terribly busy since I was there. I’ve done many activities for my study such as exhibition preparations and participations in academic conferences. Also, I’ve learned about hard facts of EV.

There is another reason why I like EV. I got to know a lot of problems of EV through my study. Due to those problems, EV is difficult to be popular like a common car. There are two major problems within the range and costs. EV charges its own battery by the power of electric motor rotations. If the battery runs down, you cannot charge it immediately. This is one of the major disadvantages by comparing to gasoline or gas-powered vehicles. It takes a long time to charge. Recently, it comes to creating the smart grid system. This is a convenient way to charge batteries in many gas stations. In this case, the infrastructure costs are higher than for the charging equipments. It takes a long time to achieve this system. Also, the high battery cost remains a serious concern. Although some automakers offer EV rental or lease services, EV is not for sale to the public yet, because their expensive batteries are not ready for mass production. So we need to take a long time to reach the target for popularization of the EV.

And my last reason comes from environmental issues. I grew up in the northern part of Miyagi prefecture. My home town is such a peaceful place. My grandfather worked in agriculture and I freely lived in nature. There were a lot of greenery and wild lives around me. I could feel nature with beautiful flowers, bright green, animals and plants. It made me have an interest in environmental problems. When I was a junior high school student, I appealed it in an English speech contest. I think this is very serious problem because environmental damages accumulate over the years and sometimes there is nothing we can do to prevent them. All sorts of pollution cover the earth, and many spices are facing extinction or falling into the endangered category. Besides, many environmental problems are too complex to be solved by simple protection measures because of the close relationships between species in the ecosystem. For example, if we try to increase certain endangered species, the ecological pyramid would be destroyed and it would influence other species. Like this, I think the natural environment has complex connections. Till now, I paid attention to environmental damages. That’s why I wish to have a job to prevent them. My precious hometown is at risk. I would like to do something for it as much as I can. I know my dream is grand and it has many problems. For sure I will never make my wish come true by on my own. However, I am realizing my dream step by step through studying EV. For the next step, I will start to work in an automobile company next April. Of course, nothing is decided yet about my work expectations. But small steps can go a long way. If I never give up my dream, I can make it come true. I want to realize my dream of popularizing the EV with many other people altogether in the near future. I invite you to share my dream. Thank you for your attention.