 It is difficult to say just which of the many experimental vehicles produced in the 18th and 19th centuries can lay claim to the title of "first" car. Many inventors throughout Europe and the United States were attempting to design functional, motorized vehicles from as early as the 1760s. Steam powered the early attempts, such as Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot's steam truck built in 1769 to transport cannon for the French army. Although capable of an amazing four kilometres per hour, the truck had to stop every 15 minutes to have its boiler refilled! Fuel economy rated at one tank per kilometre wasn't really very attractive, so Cugnot continued his research and development. He also had his share of driving woes: his second steam vehicle, a tractor designed for a four- to five-tonne payload, is charged with causing the world's first automobile accident when it ran into a high garden wall during its first trip. Thirty years later in 1801, Englishman Richard Treveithick designed the world's first vehicle capable of carrying passengers. Two years later, he and associate Andrew Vivian designed the celebrated London Carriage, a coach-like, steam-powered vehicle capable of the amazing speed of 16 km/h (10 mph). But financial support dwindled, and the vehicle was eventually dismantled. Throughout the 19th century there were experiments with numerous innovations, each bringing the world closer to what we now consider a "car". There was a gas-vacuum engine that operated on coal, a steam coach with four-wheel drive, a two-stroke gasoline-powered vehicle, an electric car, and even a 12-seater steam buggy that featured an elliptical cam steering system and independent front suspension. However, it is with introduction of the four-stroke engine between 1885 and 1889 that the era of the true car begins. The engine was created simultaneously, but independently, by two German engineers, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. Benz got on the market first in 1888 and 1889 with what is today considered to be the first true car. The Benz Motor Wagen was a three-wheeler which ran on paraffin, gasoline or naphtha, and could reach the hair-raising and sustained speed of 15 km/h. The rest is history, and today there are more than 600 million cars in use around the world.
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