Inventions
Automobile
Mechanical Engineering
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
An automobile, or car, is a wheeled motor vehicle built mainly to transport people rather than cargo, most commonly seating one to eight occupants on four wheels and designed to run primarily on roads. The French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the first steam powered road vehicle in 1769, and the Swiss inventor Francois Isaac de Rivaz designed and built the first internal combustion powered automobile in 1808. The modern car, meaning a practical vehicle marketed for everyday use, followed in 1886, when the German inventor Carl Benz patented his Benz Patent Motorwagen. Mass production made cars widely affordable during the twentieth century, led by the 1901 Oldsmobile Curved Dash and the 1908 Ford Model T, and by 2025 more than 1.6 billion cars were in use worldwide.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.