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From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia An automobile, 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.[1]
However, the term automobile is far from precise, because there are many
types of vehicles that do similar tasks. |
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There are approximately 600 million passenger
cars worldwide (roughly one car per eleven people).[2][3] Around the world,
there were about 806 million cars and light trucks on the road in 2007; they
burn over 1 billion m³ (260 billion US gallons) of gasoline and diesel fuel
yearly. The numbers are increasing rapidly, especially in China and India.
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').[7][8]
Leonty Shamshurenkov, a Russian peasant, constructed a human-pedalled
four-wheeled "auto-running" carriage in 1752, and subsequently proposed to
equip it with odometer and to use the same principle for making a
self-propelling sledge.[9][10]
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.
In the 1780s, a Russian inventor of merchant origin, Ivan Kulibin, developed
a human-pedalled, three-wheeled carriage with modern features such as a
flywheel, brake, gear box, and bearings; however, it was not developed
further.[11]
François Isaac de Rivaz, a Swiss inventor, designed the first internal
combustion engine, in 1806, which was fueled by a mixture of hydrogen and
oxygen and used it to develop the world's first vehicle, albeit rudimentary,
to be powered by such an engine. The design was not very successful, as was
the case with others, such as Samuel Brown, Samuel Morey, and Etienne Lenoir
with his hippomobile, who each produced vehicles (usually adapted carriages
or carts) powered by clumsy internal combustion engines.[12]
In November 1881, French inventor Gustave Trouvé demonstrated a working
three-wheeled automobile that was powered by electricity. This was at the
International Exhibition of Electricity in Paris.
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