(the ‘large-scale, production-line manufacturing’ of ‘affordable automobiles’ was debuted by ‘ransom olds’ at his ‘oldsmobile factory’ in ‘1902’)
(this concept was greatly expanded by ‘henry ford’, beginning in ‘1914’)
(cars did not become widely available until the early 20th century)
(one of the first cars that was accessible to the masses was the 1908 ‘Model T’, an American car manufactured by the “ford motor company”)
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(a car is a wheeled, self-powered motor vehicle used for transportation and a product of the automotive industry)
(most definitions of the term specify that cars are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels with ‘tyres’, and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods)
(the year 1886 is regarded as the birth year of the “modern car”)
(in that year, german inventor ‘karl benz’ built the ‘benz patent-motorwagen’)
(cars were rapidly adopted in the “United States of America”, where they replaced animal-drawn carriages and carts, but took much longer to be accepted in Western Europe and other parts of the world)
(cars are equipped with controls used for driving, parking, passenger comfort and safety, and controlling a variety of lights)
(over the decades, additional features and controls have been added to vehicles, making them progressively more complex)
(examples include ‘rear reversing cameras’, ‘air conditioning’, ‘navigation systems’, and ‘in car entertainment’)
(most cars in use in the 2010s are propelled by an ‘internal combustion engine’, fueled by ‘deflagration’ of ‘gasoline’ (also known as ‘petrol’) or ‘diesel’)
(both fuels cause ‘air pollution’ and are also blamed for contributing to ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’)
(vehicles using ‘alternative fuels’ such as ‘ethanol flexible-fuel vehicles’ and ‘natural gas vehicles’ are also gaining popularity in some countries)
(‘electric cars’, which were invented early in the history of the car, began to become commercially available in 2008)
(there are costs and benefits to car use)
(the costs of car usage include the cost of: acquiring the vehicle, interest payments (if the car is financed), repairs and ‘auto maintenance’, fuel, ‘depreciation’, driving time, ‘parking fees’, taxes, and insurance)
(the costs to society of car use include: ‘maintaining roads’, ‘land use’, ‘road congestion’, air pollution, ‘public health’, health care, and disposing of the vehicle at the end of its life)
(‘road traffic accidents’ are the largest cause of injury-related deaths worldwide)
(the benefits may include on-demand transportation, mobility, independence, and convenience)
(the societal benefits may include: economic benefits, such as job and wealth creation from car production, sales and maintenance, transportation provision, society well-being derived from leisure and travel opportunities, and revenue generation from the tax opportunities)
(the ability for humans to move flexibly from place to place has far-reaching implications for the nature of societies)
(it was estimated in 2010 that the number of cars had risen to over 1 billion vehicles, up from the 500 million of 1986)
(the numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in ‘china’, ‘india’, and other ‘newly industrialized countries’)
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“AUTOMOBILE”
auto (Greek: ‘self’ + Latin ‘movable’)
Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered vehicle around 1672 which was of small scale and designed as a toy for the Chinese Emperor that was unable to carry a driver or a passenger, but quite possibly, was the first working steam-powered vehicle (‘auto-mobile’)
Although Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769 by adapting an existing horse-drawn vehicle, this claim is disputed by some[citation needed], who doubt Cugnot’s three-wheeler ever ran or was stable.
What is not in doubt is that Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive in 1801, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle although it was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and would have been of little practical use.
(although several other ‘german engineers’ (including ‘gottlieb daimler’, ‘wilhelm maybach’, and ‘siegfried marcus’) were working on the problem at about the same time, ‘karl benz’ generally is acknowledged as the inventor of the ‘modern automobile’)
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