Cars - Past, Present & Future

Past

Present

            

Future

Past

Benz "Velo" model (1894)

World was used to the transportation with only ‘horse and carriage’, in the age-old days. First version of cars have emerged from this notion and looked somewhat similar to the above one. It was designed with 4 wheels analogous to 4 legs of a horse and 2 lights for the horse’ eyes. It was referred to as ‘Horseless carriage’ to start with and till date its capacity is measured in ‘Horse Power’!

The very first self-propelled road vehicle was a military tractor invented by French engineer and mechanic, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot, in 1769. In 1789, the first U.S. patent for a steam-powered land vehicle was granted to Oliver Evans. Richard Trevithick built a road carriage powered by steam. It was the first built in Great Britain, in 1801. For the first time in 1863, Jean-Joseph-Etienne Lenoir builds a “Horseless Carriage” that uses an internal combustion engine that can reach speed of 3 mph. In 1877, Nikolaus Otto builds the four-cycle internal combustion engine, the prototype for modern car engines. Henry Ford builds his first automobile in Michigan in 1886, who later founded Ford Motor Company in US.

Ford Model “T” (1908)

Present

Over the time, car has gone through lot of transformations resulting in today’s modern car, based on over 100,000 patents, like this –

to this

With continuously growing sophistication, cars are classified based on many criteria like –

• ·   The fuel they use (Petrol/Diesel/Electricty/etc)
• ·   Maximum speed attained
• ·   Purpose of the car (Leisure, Sports Utility Vehicle, Multi-Utility Vehicle)
• ·   Size of the car based on number of doors (Sedan/Coupe)
• ·   Fixed roof or convertible
• ·   Fully/partially collapsible Sun/Moon roof

Today’s cars can have innovative & expensive features like

• Air conditioner
• GPS based driving directions
• GPS based theft protection
• Audio/Video entertainment
• Refrigerator
• Auto lock-out upon idle time
• Rear view camera
• Fog lamps
• Eye retina/thumb impression based locking/ignition

Very recent technologies have advanced the car to have ‘remote locking/unlocking’ and then ‘control the temperature’, based on an SMS from the mobile phone, starting with Mahindra Reva e₂0!

Future

Cars are leaping into new trends based on the designers’ lateral thinking.

Car powered by Compressed Air is one of the latest trends. Tata Motors is one of the first to productize this technology –

Cars have started using the Solar power as fuel, but not yet industrialized –

Audi is experimenting with cars that can fly -

Car can swim too –

Trials have begun for biofuel cars too –

Space crunch in Japan has resulted in the car that can be folded in cramped places –

BMW is in the race ahead, with icing on the cake, ‘the invisible car’, which is under development –

Have a happy, safe & joyful drive!