English Vocabulary Lesson on Vehicles: Cars, Trucks, and Vans

Hi!

Bob the Canadian here.

I thought today we would learn some English words and phrases about vehicles.

My van’s not broken by the way, but I thought it might be fun just to go over a lot of different

terms and words that we use when we talk about vehicles in English because some of you will

probably have a vehicle and maybe you want to replace that vehicle by buying a new one.

Maybe you need to get it fixed.

Maybe you’re just giving someone a ride and you need to be able to talk about some

of the different parts of the vehicle.

So let’s take some time to talk about my van today!

So this is the front of the vehicle and there’s a few things that you’ll need to know to

be able to talk about the front of your vehicle in English.

These are the headlights.

These are the lights you turn on when you’re driving at night.

We also have the signal light or the turn signal which you use to indicate if you’re

turning left or right.

Down here we have the licence plate.

You can’t quite see it.

It’s a little bit out of frame, but the licence plate is the registration number on

a plate that you put on the front of your vehicle so that the police and the government

know who owns the vehicle.

We also have the hood.

So the hood is what you open when you need to access the motor or the engine of the vehicle.

And over here we have the antenna.

The antenna is connected to the radio inside so that you can listen to the music and to

radio stations.

You should know too that when we refer to a vehicle we talk about the driver’s side

and the passenger side.

So this is the side the driver sits on.

That’s the side the passenger sits on.

The reason this is important is because if you go to get your vehicle repaired, you usually

refer to which side the problem is on by passenger side or driver’s side.

So often I’ll say, you know, the driver’s side front tire is making a funny noise.

Or the passenger side rear door isn’t opening properly.

So driver’s side, passenger side, front and back, are how you refer to the different

parts of your vehicle.

So there’s a couple more things we need to look at at the front of a vehicle.

This is the windshield.

It’s the window at the front of the vehicle, and these down here are the windshield wipers.

That’s what you turn on when you’re driving in rain or snow.

So we have the windshield, we have the windshield wipers.

Let’s go and take a look at the back.

So we’re here at the back of the vehicle, by the way I think this is a good day to teach

you some English about vehicles because it’s one of the first nice days here and there’s

a lot of vehicles driving by.

This is the back of the vehicle.

We have the tail lights or the brake lights, these are also the signal lights.

So these are the lights that go on when you hit the brakes to slow down.

We also have the back up lights or the reverse lights so that people know if you’re backing

up.

So we have those obviously on the driver’s side as well as the passenger side.

This on a van is called a tailgate.

So you can lift the tailgate up and down in order to get in and out of the vehicle.

It also has a rear window that you can look out when you’re driving.

So we have the tailgate, it also has a licence plate on the back as well.

So in Ontario, Canada we have licence plates on the front and back of our vehicles.

On my van in particular down here there’s what we call a receiver so that you can put

a hitch on the van.

So I can put this down here and that allows me to hook up a trailer.

You can see the ball there let’s me hook a trailer up to my van.

So this the back of the van.

You can see we have the back seats in the van and each seat has what we call a headrest.

You can barely see this but this is the muffler right here.

The muffler is the part of the vehicle that makes the engine quieter.

Without mufflers vehicles are pretty loud.

This is something that you often do need to replace.

So many times your vehicle will get a hole in the muffler or the muffler system and it’ll

get quite loud and you’ll need to go to a garage to get your muffler replaced.

You can kind of hear the motorcycles going by probably right now.

I should have showed you.

Sorry about that!

But that’s the back of the vehicle.

Let’s take a look at the side of the vehicle.

So here we are looking at the side of my van and let’s, let’s talk about a few parts

of this to help you learn a few more English words to talk about vehicles.

Number 1, we have the wheels or the tires.

Now the distinction, the difference between a tire and a wheel isn’t really that big,

but we would call this entire thing the wheel.

This is the back wheel.

This is the front wheel.

We would call the rubber part the tire ok.

So a lot of times in Canada at this time of year we go to the garage to have our winter

tires taken off and our regular tires put on.

So these right now are winter tires for driving in the snow.

So we have the tire, we have the hubcap, the silver part.

We also have a mirror, the driver’s side mirror, for the driver to be able to look

backwards to see behind them.

We also have the rear tire which I already mentioned.

And we have of course the driver’s side door, and what we would just call the back

sliding door or the back door of the van.

If you watched my other video about going to the gas station you already know that this

is the gas cap and this is where you put gas into a vehicle.

So you would take the gas cap out, put in the gas nozzle and fill the vehicle with gas.

That’s the side.

We should look at the inside maybe next.

So this is the driver’s side of the van.

We have the steering wheel.

This is what the driver uses to steer the van.

And most vehicles in the centre is how you operate the horn.

So when I push this the van makes a honking sound.

So if I need to honk the horn I just push right here.

We also have the turn signal lever.

So if I wanna turn left or right this is for the turn signals.

And I also have what we would call the gear selector or the shifter, so this is where

I would put the vehicle in Drive if I wanted to move forward.

We also have the dash and we have all of our gauges here.

So I have a fuel gauge which maybe you can’t quite see.

A speedometer to see how fast I’m going.

This van also has a tachometer to that tells me how fast the engine is turning.

And we have a temperature gauge that lets me know how hot the engine is running.

So that is kind of a brief glimpse at the inside of the van.

I’m sitting in the driver’s seat again so we have the driver’s side, but this is

also the driver’s seat.

If I am going to go driving I would always put on my seat belt.

And this van also has airbags so if I got into an accident a bag would come out to save

me from getting injured.

So driver’s side of the van, I should make sure I take the seat belt off before I try

to get out.

Yes, sometimes I forget that and, do you ever do that?

You try to get out and your seat belt is still on?

It hurts a little bit.

So we also have a few pedals in a vehicle.

This is the parking brake pedal, but the two main pedals are the brake pedal and the gas

pedal.

So the brake pedal makes you slow down and the gas pedal or the accelerator makes you

go faster.

Hopefully you know the difference between those two.

So this what we would call the centre console.

We have the radio here.

We also have controls for the heater and the air conditioner.

So if I wanted cold air to come out the vents in the dash I would turn this way and I would

push the button for air conditioning.

If I wanted hot air to come out I would turn it this way and hot air would come out.

We also besides the radio have the button to put on our hazard lights.

When you put on your hazard lights all four lights, one on each corner, flash indicating

that you’re having a problem with your vehicle.

And my favourite, we have a cup holder down here.

I’m not sure if you can see it.

Let me scooch forward.

Here’s my cup holder.

That’s where I put my coffee in the morning if I’m late for work and I have to drink

my coffee on the way to work.

So again this is called the centre console.

Sorry I almost forgot.

This is your rear view mirror that lets the driver see backwards and up here we have our

interior lights so that you can see in the vehicle at night if you need to.

Sometimes you wanna be able to talk about the engine in a vehicle.

So let me open the hood for a moment and there’s just a couple of things that you’ll want

to know about this area.

We’re not mechanics, at least I’m not, so this is the dipstick.

You use this to check how much oil is in your vehicle.

So it’s a way to make sure there’s enough oil in your vehicle.

Over here is where we would put in brake fluid to make sure that the brake system is working.

And over here is where you would put in windshield washer fluid, so windshield washer fluid is

what you can squirt on the windows to clean them when you’re driving.

You don’t need to know a lot more than that as long as you have enough coolant in your

radiator your vehicle will run fairly well and fairly cool.

But that’s about as much as I know.

I know how to check the oil, and I know how to check a few different fluid levels in a

vehicle.

Otherwise my vehicles go to a mechanic and they take care of it.

It’s pretty nice.

By the way this is where you put oil in if the dipstick says that your vehicle needs

some oil.

Notice I teach English and I’m not a mechanic.

Well hey, thanks for taking a look at my van with me.

I know there’s probably some English words that I forgot to teach you.

But hopefully that gives you enough information that if you’re driving a vehicle you would

be able to explain a few things to a mechanic or at the very least you can say to a friend

which seat you wanna sit in if you go on a trip.

I’m Bob the Canadian.

You’re learning English with Bob the Canadian right now.

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Anyways thank you so much for watching.

Again I’m Bob the Canadian.

Hopefully you learned a little bit about vehicles today and if you have any questions put them

in the comments.