We have some students working in the automobile industry. So I would like to talk about cars this week.

I think you must know cars or automobile in Chinese is 车(chē) or 汽车(qìchē).

There are a lot of different car models. Here in Beijing or even the whole China, the most common car is sedan. Sedan is 轿车(jiàochē) or more specifically, 四门(sìmén)轿车(jiàochē) because it has 4 doors. But it is so common that when we talk about 车(chē) it refers to 轿车(jiàochē). 

When you want to talk about coupe, it should be 双门车(shuāngménchē) or 两门车(liǎngménchē) because it only has 2 doors.

Convertible car in Chinese is 敞篷车(chǎngpéngchē). 敞(chǎng)means open, 篷(péng) is the ceiling. 敞篷车(chǎngpéngchē) literally means an open ceiling car. 

In Beijing, SUV is also very popular. People can drive it for daily commuting and vacation trips. SUV in Chinese is 运动型多用途车(yùndòngxíng duōyòngtú chē). But no one will use the Chinese name as it is too long. We’ll just say SUV in Chinese. But because we don’t have the v sound in Chinese language, you will hear people read it as SUwei in China. 

Vans or Minivans have a very cute Chinese name, 面包车(miànbāo chē). 面包(miànbāo) is bread. We call vans 面包车(miànbāochē) bread car because the shape of a van looks like a loaf of toast bread.

Trucks in Chinese is 卡车(kǎchē). 卡车(kǎchē) the large cargo trucks. It’s very common to see them here on the roads. But pickup truck is not very common in the cities here. Pickup truck in Chinese is 皮卡(píkǎ). Coming from the English word pickup. 皮卡(píkǎ)

China is currently developing very rapidly in the electric vehicle industry.Now in Beijing, more and more people are choosing to buy electric cars. In Chinese, we’ll use the word 新能源汽车(xīnnéngyuán qìchē) new energy cars for EVs. When you're on the road in Beijing, the cars you see with green license plates are EVs新能源车(xīnnéngyuánchē), and the ones with blue license plates are gas cars油车(yóuchē).

The most famous 新能源车(xīnnéngyuánchē) brand should be Tesla, which Chinese name is 特斯拉(tèsīlā). And there are also many new and excellent Chinese electric vehicle brands. For example, BYD 比亚迪(bǐyàdí), NIO 蔚来(wèilái) and XPENG 小鹏(xiǎopéng).

Alright! 你(nǐ)开车(kāichē)吗(ma)？Do you have a car? 

你(nǐ)开(kāi)什么(shénme)车(chē)？What kind of car do you have? 

你(nǐ)的(de)车(chē)是(shì)油车(yóuchē)还是(háishì)新能源车(xīnnéngyuánchē)？Is your car a gas car or EV?

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