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For other uses, see Car (disambiguation).
"Passenger car" and "Automobile" redirect here. For other uses, see Passenger car
(disambiguation), Automobile (disambiguation), and Passenger railroad car.
Car
The Toyota Corolla, which has been in production since 1966, is the best-selling
series of automobile of all time.
Classification Vehicle
Industry Various
Application Transportation
Fuel source
Petrol
Diesel
Natural gas
Hydrogen
Biodiesel
Battery
Fuel cell
Solar cell
Hybrids of the above
Powered Yes
Self-propelled Yes
Wheels 3–6, most often 4
Axles 2, less commonly 3
Inventor Carl Benz
Invented 1886 (139 years ago)
A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars
state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels,
and mainly transport people rather than cargo.[1][2] There are around one billion
cars in use worldwide.[citation needed]
The French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first steam-powered road
vehicle in 1769, while the Swiss inventor François Isaac de Rivaz designed and
constructed the first internal combustion-powered automobile in 1808. The modern
car—a practical, marketable automobile for everyday use—was invented in 1886, when
the German inventor Carl Benz patented his Benz Patent-Motorwagen. Commercial cars
became widely available during the 20th century. The 1901 Oldsmobile Curved Dash
and the 1908 Ford Model T, both American cars, are widely considered the first
mass-produced[3][4] and mass-affordable[5][6][7] cars, respectively. Cars were
rapidly adopted in the US, where they replaced horse-drawn carriages.[8] In Europe
and other parts of the world, demand for automobiles did not increase until after
World War II.[9] In the 21st century, car usage is still increasing rapidly,
especially in China, India, and other newly industrialised countries.[10][11]
Cars have controls for driving, parking, passenger comfort, and a variety of lamps.
Over the decades, additional features and controls have been added to vehicles,
making them progressively more complex. These include rear-reversing cameras, air
conditioning, navigation systems, and in-car entertainment. Most cars in use in the
early 2020s are propelled by an internal combustion engine, fueled by the
combustion of fossil fuels. Electric cars, which were invented early in the history
of the car, became commercially available in the 2000s and are predicted to cost
less to buy than petrol-driven cars before 2025.[12][13] The transition from fossil
fuel-powered cars to electric cars features prominently in most climate change
mitigation scenarios,[14] such as Project Drawdown's 100 actionable solutions for
climate change.[15]
There are costs and benefits to car use. The costs to the individual include
acquiring the vehicle, interest payments (if the car is financed), repairs and
maintenance, fuel, depreciation, driving time, parking fees, taxes, and insurance.
[16] The costs to society include resources used to produce cars and fuel,
maintaining roads, land-use, road congestion, air pollution, noise pollution,
public health, and disposing of the vehicle at the end of its life. Traffic
collisions are the largest cause of injury-related deaths worldwide.[17] Personal
benefits include on-demand transportation, mobility, independence, and convenience.
[18] Societal benefits include economic benefits, such as job and wealth creation
from the automotive industry, transportation provision, societal well-being from
leisure and travel opportunities. People's ability to move flexibly from place to
place has far-reaching implications for the nature of societies.[19]
Etymology
The English word car is believed to originate from Latin carrus/carrum "wheeled
vehicle" or (via Old North French) Middle English carre "two-wheeled cart", both of
which in turn derive from Gaulish karros "chariot".[20][21] It originally referred
to any wheeled horse-drawn vehicle, such as a cart, carriage, or wagon.[22] The
word also occurs in other Celtic languages.[23]
"Motor car", attested from 1895, is the usual formal term in British English.[2]
"Autocar", a variant likewise attested from 1895 and literally meaning "self-
propelled car", is now considered archaic.[24] "Horseless carriage" is attested
from 1895.[25]
"Automobile", a classical compound derived from Ancient Greek autós (αὐτός) "self"
and Latin mobilis "movable", entered English from French and was first adopted by
the Automobile Club of Great Britain in 1897.[26] It fell out of favour in Britain
and is now used chiefly in North America,[27] where the abbreviated form "auto"
commonly appears as an adjective in compound formations like "auto industry" and
"auto mechanic".[28][29]
History
Main article: History of the automobile
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Steam machine of Verbiest, in 1678 (Ferdinand Verbiest)
Cugnot's 1771 fardier à vapeur, as preserved at the Musée des Arts et Métiers,
Paris
Carl Benz, the inventor of the modern car
The original Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the first modern car, built in 1885 and
awarded the patent for the concept
Bertha Benz, the first long distance driver
The Flocken Elektrowagen was the first four-wheeled electric car
Stuttgart, a cradle of the car[30][31] with Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach
working there at the Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and place of the modern day
headquarters of Mercedes-Benz Group and Porsche
In 1649, Hans Hautsch of Nuremberg built a clockwork-driven carriage.[32][33] The
first steam-powered vehicle was designed by Ferdinand Verbiest, a Flemish member of
a Jesuit mission in China around 1672. It was a 65-centimetre-long (26 in) scale-
model toy for the Kangxi Emperor that was unable to carry a driver or a passenger.
[18][34][35] It is not known with certainty if Verbiest's model was successfully
built or run.[35]
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is widely credited with building the first full-scale, self-
propelled mechanical vehicle in about 1769; he created a steam-powered tricycle.
[36] He also constructed two steam tractors for the French Army, one of which is
preserved in the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.[36] His
inventions were limited by problems with water supply and maintaining steam
pressure.[36] In 1801, Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil
road locomotive, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered
road vehicle. It was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods
and was of little practical use.
The development of external combustion (steam) engines is detailed as part of the
history of the car but often treated separately from the development of cars in
their modern understanding. A variety of steam-powered road vehicles were used
during the first part of the 19th century, including steam cars, steam buses,
phaetons, and steam rollers. In the United Kingdom, sentiment against them led to
the Locomotive Acts of 1865.
In 1807, Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude created what was probably the
world's first internal combustion engine (which they called a Pyréolophore), but
installed it in a boat on the river Saone in France.[37] Coincidentally, in 1807,
the Swiss inventor François Isaac de Rivaz designed his own "de Rivaz internal
combustion engine", and used it to develop the world's first vehicle to be powered
by such an engine. The Niépces' Pyréolophore was fuelled by a mixture of Lycopodium
powder (dried spores of the Lycopodium plant), finely crushed coal dust and resin
that were mixed with oil, whereas de Rivaz used a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.
[37] Neither design was successful, as was the case with others, such as Samuel
Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir,[38] who each built vehicles (usually
adapted carriages or carts) powered by internal combustion engines.[39]
In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a three-wheeled car
powered by electricity at the International Exposition of Electricity.[40] Although
several other German engineers (including Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, and
Siegfried Marcus) were working on cars at about the same time, the year 1886 is
regarded as the birth year of the modern car—a practical, marketable automobile for
everyday use—when the German Carl Benz patented his Benz Patent-Motorwagen; he is
generally acknowledged as the inventor of the car.[39][41][42]
In 1879, Benz was granted a patent for his first engine, which had been designed in
1878. Many of his other inventions made the use of the internal combustion engine
feasible for powering a vehicle. His first Motorwagen was built in 1885 in
Mannheim, Germany. He was awarded the patent for its invention as of his
application on 29 January 1886 (under the auspices of his major company, Benz &
Cie., which was founded in 1883). Benz began promotion of the vehicle on 3 July
1886, and about 25 Benz vehicles were sold between 1888 and 1893, when his first
four-wheeler was introduced along with a cheaper model. They also were powered with
four-stroke engines of his own design. Emile Roger of France, already producing
Benz engines under license, now added the Benz car to his line of products. Because
France was more open to the early cars, initially more were built and sold in
France through Roger than Benz sold in Germany. In August 1888, Bertha Benz, the
wife and business partner of Carl Benz, undertook the first road trip by car, to
prove the road-worthiness of her husband's invention.[43]
In 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal-combustion flat engine,
called boxermotor. During the last years of the 19th century, Benz was the largest
car company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899 and, because of its size,
Benz & Cie., became a joint-stock company. The first motor car in central Europe
and one of the first factory-made cars in the world, was produced by Czech company
Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau (later renamed to Tatra) in 1897, the Präsident automobil.
Daimler and Maybach founded Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Cannstatt in
1890, and sold their first car in 1892 under the brand name Daimler. It was a
horse-drawn stagecoach built by another manufacturer, which they retrofitted with
an engine of their design. By 1895, about 30 vehicles had been built by Daimler and
Maybach, either at the Daimler works or in the Hotel Hermann, where they set up
shop after disputes with their backers. Benz, Maybach, and the Daimler team seem to
have been unaware of each other's early work. They never worked together; by the
time of the merger of the two companies, Daimler and Maybach were no longer part of
DMG. Daimler died in 1900 and later that year, Maybach designed an engine named
Daimler-Mercedes that was placed in a specially ordered model built to
specifications set by Emil Jellinek. This was a production of a small number of
vehicles for Jellinek to race and market in his country. Two years later, in 1902,
a new model DMG car was produced and the model was named Mercedes after the Maybach
engine, which generated 35 hp. Maybach quit DMG shortly thereafter and opened a
business of his own. Rights to the Daimler brand name were sold to other
manufacturers.
In 1890, Émile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with
Daimler engines, and so laid the foundation of the automotive industry in France.
In 1891, Auguste Doriot and his Peugeot colleague Louis Rigoulot completed the
longest trip by a petrol-driven vehicle when their self-designed and built Daimler
powered Peugeot Type 3 completed 2,100 kilometres (1,300 mi) from Valentigney to
Paris and Brest and back again. They were attached to the first Paris–Brest–Paris
bicycle race, but finished six days after the winning cyclist, Charles Terront.
The first design for an American car with a petrol internal combustion engine was
made in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York. Selden applied for a patent
for a car in 1879, but the patent application expired because the vehicle was never
built. After a delay of 16 years and a series of attachments to his application, on
5 November 1895, Selden was granted a US patent (U.S. patent 549,160) for a two-
stroke car engine, which hindered, more than encouraged, development of cars in the
United States. His patent was challenged by Henry Ford and others, and overturned
in 1911.
In 1893, the first running, petrol-driven American car was built and road-tested by
the Duryea brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts. The first public run of the
Duryea Motor Wagon took place on 21 September 1893, on Taylor Street in Metro
Center Springfield.[44][45] Studebaker, subsidiary of a long-established wagon and
coach manufacturer, started to build cars in 1897[46]: 66 and commenced sales of
electric vehicles in 1902 and petrol vehicles in 1904.[47]
In Britain, there had been several attempts to build steam cars with varying
degrees of success, with Thomas Rickett even attempting a production run in 1860.
[48] Santler from Malvern is recognised by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as
having made the first petrol-driven car in the country in 1894,[49] followed by
Frederick William Lanchester in 1895, but these were both one-offs.[49] The first
production vehicles in Great Britain came from the Daimler Company, a company
founded by Harry J. Lawson in 1896, after purchasing the right to use the name of
the engines. Lawson's company made its first car in 1897, and they bore the name
Daimler.[49]
In 1892, German engineer Rudolf Diesel was granted a patent for a "New Rational
Combustion Engine". In 1897, he built the first diesel engine.[39] Steam-,
electric-, and petrol-driven vehicles competed for a few decades, with petrol
internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s. Although various
pistonless rotary engine designs have attempted to compete with the conventional
piston and crankshaft design, only Mazda's version of the Wankel engine has had
more than very limited success. All in all, it is estimated that over 100,000
patents created the modern automobile and motorcycle.[50]
Mass production
See also: Automotive industry
Ransom E. Olds founded Olds Motor Vehicle Company (Oldsmobile) in 1897.
Ford Motor Company automobile assembly line in the 1920s
The Toyota Corolla is the best-selling car of all-time.
Large-scale, production-line manufacturing of affordable cars was started by Ransom
Olds in 1901 at his Oldsmobile factory in Lansing, Michigan, and based upon
stationary assembly line techniques pioneered by Marc Isambard Brunel at the
Portsmouth Block Mills, England, in 1802. The assembly line style of mass
production and interchangeable parts had been pioneered in the US by Thomas
Blanchard in 1821, at the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts.[51]
This concept was greatly expanded by Henry Ford, beginning in 1913 with the world's
first moving assembly line for cars at the Highland Park Ford Plant.
As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in 15-minute intervals, much faster than
previous methods, increasing productivity eightfold, while using less manpower
(from 12.5 manhours to 1 hour 33 minutes).[52] It was so successful, paint became a
bottleneck. Only Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the
variety of colours available before 1913, until fast-drying Duco lacquer was
developed in 1926. This is the source of Ford's apocryphal remark, "any color as
long as it's black".[52] In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with
four months' pay.[52]
Ford's complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific
location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced the rate of
injury.[53] The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called "Fordism"
and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly
line also coincided with the economic rise of the US. The assembly line forced
workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more
output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods.
In the automotive industry, its success was dominating, and quickly spread
worldwide seeing the founding of Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark
1923, Ford Germany 1925; in 1921, Citroën was the first native European
manufacturer to adopt the production method. Soon, companies had to have assembly
lines, or risk going bankrupt; by 1930, 250 companies which did not, had
disappeared.[52]
Development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to the hundreds of
small manufacturers competing to gain the world's attention. Key developments
included electric ignition and the electric self-starter (both by Charles
Kettering, for the Cadillac Motor Company in 1910–1911), independent suspension,
and four-wheel brakes.
Since the 1920s, nearly all cars have been mass-produced to meet market needs, so
marketing plans often have heavily influenced car design. It was Alfred P. Sloan
who established the idea of different makes of cars produced by one company, called
the General Motors Companion Make Program, so that buyers could "move up" as their
fortunes improved.
Reflecting the rapid pace of change, makes shared parts with one
