An
automobile,
autocar,
motor car or
car is a
wheeled motor vehicle used for
transporting passengers, which also carries its own
engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on
roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the
transport of people rather than goods.
[3]
The term
motorcar has also been used in the context of electrified rail systems to denote a car which functions as a small locomotive but also provides space for passengers and baggage. These locomotive cars were often used on suburban routes by both interurban and intercity railroad systems.
[4]
There are approximately 600 million passenger cars worldwide (roughly one car per eleven people).
[5][6] Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; the engines of these burn over a billion cubic meters (260 billion US gallons) of petrol/gasoline and diesel fuel yearly. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in
China and
India.
[The first working steam-powered vehicle was likely to have been designed by
Ferdinand Verbiest, a
Flemish member of a
Jesuit mission in China around 1672. It was a 65 cm-long scale-model toy for the Chinese Emperor, that was unable to carry a driver or a passenger.
[10][11][12] It is not known if Verbiest's model was ever built.
[11]
Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is widely credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769; he created a steam-powered tricycle.
[13] He also constructed two steam tractors for the French Army, one of which is preserved in the French National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts.
[14] His inventions were however handicapped by problems with water supply and maintaining steam pressure.
[14]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.
World map of passenger cars per 1000 people
Karl Benz, the inventor of the modern automobile
An automobile powered by his own
four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in
Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885, and granted a
patentin January of the following year under the auspices of his major company,
Benz & Cie., which was founded in 1883. It was an
integral design, without the adaptation of other existing components, and included several new technological elements to create a new concept. He began to sell his production vehicles in 1888.
A photograph of the original
Benz Patent-Motorwagen, first built in 1885 and awarded the patent for the concept
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, and he was awarded the patent for its invention as of his application on January 29, 1886. Benz began promotion of the vehicle on July 3, 1886, and about 25 Benz vehicles were sold between 1888 and 1893, when his first four-wheeler was introduced along with a model intended for affordability. 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 automobile to his line of products. Because France was more open to the early automobiles, initially more were built and sold in France through Roger than Benz sold in Germany.
Bertha Benz, the first long distance automobile driver in the world
In August 1888
Bertha Benz, the wife of Karl Benz, undertook the first
road trip by car, to prove the road-worthiness of her husband's invention.
In 1896, Benz designed and patented the first internal-combustion
flat engine, called
boxermotor. During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899 and, because of its size, Benz & Cie., became a
joint-stock company.
Daimler and Maybach founded
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in
Cannstatt in 1890, and sold their first automobile in 1892 under the brand name,
Daimler. It was a horse-drawn stagecoach built by another manufacturer, that 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 others' 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 automobile 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.
Karl Benz proposed co-operation between DMG and Benz & Cie. when economic conditions began to deteriorate in Germany following the
First World War, but the directors of DMG refused to consider it initially. Negotiations between the two companies resumed several years later when these conditions worsened and, in 1924 they signed an
Agreement of Mutual Interest, valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized design, production, purchasing, and sales and they advertised or marketed their automobile models jointly, although keeping their respective brands. On June 28, 1926, Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the
Daimler-Benz company, baptizing all of its automobiles
Mercedes Benz, as a brand honoring the most important model of the DMG automobiles, the Maybach design later referred to as the
1902 Mercedes-35 hp, along with the Benz name. Karl Benz remained a member of the board of directors of Daimler-Benz until his death in 1929, and at times, his two sons participated in the management of the company as well.
In 1890,
Émile Levassor and
Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with Daimler engines, and so laid the foundation of the automobile industry in France.
The first design for an American automobile with a gasoline internal combustion engine was made in 1877 by
George Selden of
Rochester, New York. Selden applied for a patent for an automobile in 1879, but the patent application expired because the vehicle was never built. After a delay of sixteen years and a series of attachments to his application, on November 5, 1895, Selden was granted a United States patent (
U.S. Patent 549,160) for a
two-stroke automobile engine, which hindered, more than encouraged, development of automobiles in the United States. His patent was challenged by
Henry Ford and others, and overturned in 1911.
In 1893, the first running, gasoline-powered
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 September 21, 1893, on Taylor Street in
Metro Center Springfield.
[18][19] To construct the Duryea Motor Wagon, the brothers had purchased a used horse-drawn buggy for $70 and then installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine.
[18] The car had a friction transmission, spray carburetor, and low tension ignition. It was road-tested again on November 10, when the
The Springfield Republican newspaper made the announcement.
[18] This particular car was put into storage in 1894 and stayed there until 1920 when it was rescued by Inglis M. Uppercu and presented to the
United States National Museum.
[18]
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.
[20] Santler from Malvern is recognized by the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain as having made the first petrol-powered car in the country in 1894
[21] followed by
Frederick William Lanchester in 1895, but these were both one-offs.
[21] The first production vehicles in Great Britain came from the
Daimler Motor 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 automobiles in 1897, and they bore the name
Daimler.
[21]
In 1892, German engineer
Rudolf Diesel was granted a patent for a "New Rational Combustion Engine". In 1897, he built the first
Diesel Engine.
[16] Steam-, electric-, and gasoline-powered vehicles competed for decades, with gasoline internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s.
Mass production
As a result, Ford's cars came off the line in fifteen minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing productivity eightfold (requiring 12.5 man-hours before, 1 hour 33 minutes after), while using less manpower.
[23] It was so successful,
paint became a bottleneck. Only
Japan black would dry fast enough, forcing the company to drop the variety of colors available before 1914, 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".
[23] In 1914, an assembly line worker could buy a Model T with four months' pay.
[23]
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. 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 United States. 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,
Citroen was the first native European manufacturer to adopt the production method. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke; by 1930, 250 companies which did not, had disappeared.
[23]
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.
Ford Model T, 1927, regarded as the first affordable American automobile
Since the 1920s, nearly all cars have been mass-produced to meet market needs, so marketing plans often have heavily influenced automobile design. It was
Alfred P. Sloan who established the idea of different makes of cars produced by one company, so buyers could "move up" as their fortunes improved.
Reflecting the rapid pace of change, makes shared parts with one another so larger production volume resulted in lower costs for each price range. For example, in the 1930s,
LaSalles, sold by
Cadillac, used cheaper mechanical parts made by
Oldsmobile; in the 1950s,
Chevrolet shared hood, doors, roof, and windows with
Pontiac; by the 1990s, corporate
powertrains and shared
platforms (with interchangeable
brakes, suspension, and other parts) were common. Even so, only major makers could afford high costs, and even companies with decades of production, such as
Apperson,
Cole,
Dorris,
Haynes, or
Premier, could not manage: of some two hundred American car makers in existence in 1920, only 43 survived in 1930, and with the
Great Depression, by 1940, only 17 of those were left.
[23]
In Europe much the same would happen.
Morris set up its production line at
Cowley in 1924, and soon outsold Ford, while beginning in 1923 to follow Ford's practise of
vertical integration, buying
Hotchkiss (engines),
Wrigley (gearboxes), and
Osberton (radiators), for instance, as well as competitors, such as
Wolseley: in 1925, Morris had 41% of total British car production. Most British small-car assemblers, from
Abbey to
Xtra had gone under. Citroen did the same in France, coming to cars in 1919; between them and other cheap cars in reply such as
Renault's
10CV and
Peugeot's
5CV, they produced 550,000 cars in 1925, and
Mors,
Hurtu, and others could not compete.
[23] Germany's first mass-manufactured car, the
Opel 4PS Laubfrosch (Tree Frog), came off the line at
Russelsheim in 1924, soon making Opel the top car builder in Germany, with 37.5% of the market.
[23]
Weight
The weight of a car influences fuel consumption and performance, with more weight resulting in increased fuel consumption and decreased performance. According to a research conducted by
Julian Allwood of the
University of Cambridge, global energy use could be heavily reduced by using lighter cars, and an average weight of 500 kg has been said to be well achievable.
[24]
In some competitions such as the
Shell Eco Marathon, average car weights of 45 kg have also been achieved.
[25][26] These cars are only single-seaters (still falling within the definition of a car, although 4-seater cars are more common), but it nevertheless demonstrates the huge degree in which car weights can still be reduced, and the subsequent lower fuel use (i.e. up to a fuel use of 2560 km/l.
[27]
Seating and body style
Most cars are designed to carry multiple occupants, often with four or five seats. Larger cars can often carry six, seven or more occupants depending in the internal arrange of seats. Sports cars are often designed with only two seats, and very occasionally three seats. The differing needs for passenger capacity and their luggage has resulted in a large variety of body styles to suit personal requirements such as the
sedan/saloon,
hatchback,
station wagon/estate and
Multi-Purpose Vehicle/
Minivan.
Fuel and propulsion technologies
Safety
While road traffic injuries represent the leading cause in worldwide injury-related deaths,
[29] their popularity undermines this statistic.
Costs and benefits
The costs of automobile usage, which may include the cost of: acquiring the vehicle, repairs, maintenance, fuel,
depreciation, injury, driving time,
parking fees,
tire replacement, taxes, and
insurance,
[34] are weighed against the cost of the alternatives, and the value of the benefits – perceived and real – of vehicle usage. The benefits may include on-demand transportation, mobility, independence and convenience.
[12]
Similarly the costs to society of encompassing automobile use, which may include those of:
maintaining roads,
land use,
pollution,
public health,
health care, and of disposing of the vehicle at the end of its life, can be balanced against the value of the benefits to society that automobile use generates. The societal benefits may include: economy benefits, such as job and wealth creation, of automobile production and maintenance, transportation provision, society wellbeing 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.
[35]
Criticism
Transportation is a major contributor to
air pollution in most industrialised nations. According to the American Surface Transportation Policy Project nearly half of all Americans are breathing unhealthy air. Their study showed air quality in dozens of metropolitan areas has worsened over the last decade.
[36] In the United States the average passenger car emits 11,450 pounds (5,190 kg) of the
greenhouse gas,
carbon dioxide annually, along with smaller amounts of
carbon monoxide,
hydrocarbons, and
nitrogen.
[37]
Animals and plants are often negatively impacted by automobiles via
habitat destruction and pollution. Over the lifetime of the average automobile the "loss of habitat potential" may be over 50,000 square meters (540,000 sq ft) based on
primary production correlations.
[38] Millions of animals are also killed every year on roads by automobiles—so-called
Roadkill.
[citation needed]
Fuel taxes may act as an incentive for the production of more efficient, hence less polluting, car designs (e.g.
hybrid vehicles) and the development of
alternative fuels. High fuel taxes may provide a strong incentive for consumers to purchase lighter, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, or to not drive. On average, today's automobiles are about 75 percent recyclable, and using recycled steel helps reduce energy use and pollution.
[40] In the United States Congress, federally mandated fuel efficiency standards have been debated regularly, passenger car standards have not risen above the 27.5 miles per US gallon (8.55 L/100 km; 33.0 mpg
-imp) standard set in 1985. Light
truck standards have changed more frequently, and were set at 22.2 miles per US gallon (10.6 L/100 km; 26.7 mpg
-imp) in 2007.
[41] Alternative fuel vehicles are another option that is less
polluting than conventional
petroleum powered vehicles.
Oil consumption in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has been abundantly pushed by automobile growth; the
1985-2003 oil glut even fuelled the sales of low economy vehicles in
OECD countries. The
BRIC countries might also kick in, as
China briefly was the first automobile market in December 2009.
[42]
Residents of low-density, residential-only sprawling communities are also more likely to die in
car collisions[original research?] which kill 1.2 million people worldwide each year, and injure about forty times this number.
[29] Sprawl is more broadly a factor in inactivity and
obesity, which in turn can lead to increased risk of a variety of diseases.
[43]
Driverless cars
Main article:
Driverless car
Fully autonomous vehicles, also known as robotic cars, or driverless cars, already exist in prototype, and are expected to be commercially available around 2020. According to urban designer and futurist
Michael E. Arth, driverless electric vehicles—in conjunction with the increased use of
virtual reality for work, travel, and pleasure—could reduce the world's 800 million vehicles to a fraction of that number within a few decades.
[44] This would be possible if almost all private cars requiring drivers, which are not in use and parked 90% of the time, would be traded for public self-driving taxis that would be in near constant use. This would also allow for getting the appropriate vehicle for the particular need—a
bus could come for a group of people, a limousine could come for a special night out, and a Segway could come for a short trip down the street for one person. Children could be chauffeured in supervised safety,
DUIs would no longer exist, and 41,000 lives could be saved each year in the US alone.
[45][46]
Future car technologies
Open source development
There have been several projects aiming to develop a car on the principles of
open design. The projects include
OScar,
Riversimple (through 40fires.org)
[48] and c,mm,n.
[49] None of the projects have reached significant success in terms of developing a car as a whole both from hardware and software perspective and no mass production ready open-source based design have been introduced as of late 2009. Some car
hacking through
on-board diagnostics (OBD) has been done so far.
[50]
Alternatives to the automobile
Established alternatives for some aspects of automobile use include
public transit such as buses,
trolleybuses,
trains,
subways,
tramways light rail,
cycling, and
walking.
Car-sharearrangements and
carpooling are also increasingly popular–the US market leader in car-sharing has experienced double-digit growth in revenue and membership growth between 2006 and 2007, offering a service that enables urban residents to "share" a vehicle rather than own a car in already congested neighborhoods.
[51] Bike-share systems have been tried in some European cities, including
Copenhagen and
Amsterdam. Similar programs have been experimented with in a number of US Cities.
[52] Additional individual modes of transport, such as
personal rapid transit could serve as an alternative to automobiles if they prove to be socially accepted.
[53]
Industry
The automotive industry designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and sells the world's
motor vehicles. In 2008, more than 70 million motor vehicles, including cars and
commercial vehicles were produced worldwide.
[54]
In 2007, a total of 71.9 million new automobiles were sold worldwide: 22.9 million in Europe, 21.4 million in the Asia-Pacific Region, 19.4 million in the USA and Canada, 4.4 million in Latin America, 2.4 million in the Middle East and 1.4 million in Africa.
[55] The markets in North America and Japan were stagnant, while those in South America and other parts of Asia grew strongly. Of the major markets,
China,
Russia,
Brazil and
India saw the most rapid growth.
About 250 million vehicles are in use in the
United States. Around the world, there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; they burn over 260 billion US gallons (980,000,000 m
3) of gasoline and diesel fuel yearly. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in China and India.
[7] In the opinion of some, urban transport systems based around the car have proved unsustainable, consuming excessive energy, affecting the health of populations, and delivering a declining level of service despite increasing investments. Many of these negative impacts fall disproportionately on those social groups who are also least likely to own and drive cars.
[56][57][58] The
sustainable transportmovement focuses on solutions to these problems.
In 2008, with rapidly rising oil prices, industries such as the automotive industry, are experiencing a combination of pricing pressures from raw material costs and changes in consumer buying habits. The industry is also facing increasing external competition from the public transport sector, as consumers re-evaluate their private vehicle usage.
[59]Roughly half of the US's fifty-one light vehicle plants are projected to permanently close in the coming years, with the loss of another 200,000 jobs in the sector, on top of the 560,000 jobs lost this decade.
[60] Combined with robust growth in China, in 2009, this resulted in China becoming the largest automobile producer and market in the world. China 2009 sales had increased to 13.6 million, a significant increase from one million of domestic car sales in 2000.
[61]
Market
The automotive market is formed by the demand and the industry. This article is about the general, major trends in the automotive market, mainly from the demand side.
The European automotive market has always boasted a higher number of smaller cars than the United States. With the high fuel prices and the
world petroleum crisis, the United States may see its automotive market become more like the European market with fewer large vehicles on the road and more
small cars.
[62]
For luxurious cars, with the current volatility in oil prices, going for smaller cars is not only smart, but also trendy. And because fashion is of high importance with the upper classes, the little green cars with luxury trimmings become quite plausible.
[63]
