Automobile
Karl Benz’s "Velo" model (1894) - entered in-
to an early automobile race
Passenger cars in 2000
World map of passenger cars per 1000
people.
An automobile or motor car is a wheeled
motor vehicle used for transporting passen-
gers, which also carries its own engine or
motor. Most definitions of the term specify
that automobiles are designed to run primar-
ily 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.[1] However, the
term automobile is far from precise, because
there are many types of vehicles that do sim-
ilar tasks.
As of 2002, there were 590 million passen-
ger cars worldwide (roughly one car per elev-
en people).[2] Around the world, there were
about 806 million cars and light trucks on the
road in 2007; they burn over 260 billion gal-
lons of gasoline and diesel fuel yearly. The
numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in
China and India.[3]
Etymology
The word automobile comes, via the French
automobile, from the Ancient Greek word
αὐτός (autós, "self") and the Latin mobilis
("movable"); meaning a vehicle that moves it-
self, rather than being pulled or pushed by a
separate animal or another vehicle. The al-
ternative name car is believed to originate
from the Latin word carrus or carrum
("wheeled vehicle"), or the Middle English
word carre ("cart") (from Old North French),
or karros (a Gallic wagon).[4][5]
History
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’).[6][7]
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, who
doubt Cugnot’s three-wheeler ever ran o