The automobile has defined the U.S. more than any other product of the Industrial Revolution.
No nation on Earth embraces the automobile more than America; no nation builds or buys more autos than America; and no nation has been changed more by the automobile.
And more changes are on the way as today’s engineers work on such things as electric vehicles and smart highway systems.
Autos have come to define freedom. Imagine how radically different life would be had the automobile not been invented. You might ride a horse or a bicycle to work. Malls, supermarkets and motels would not exist–at least not as we know them. There would be no driveup windows.
While automobiles have made our lives easier, they’ve also brought death and injuries. More than 40,000 people a year die in U.S. traffic accidents and many more thousands are injured. And the environment has suffered because of the pollutants gas-burning vehicles emit.
The U.S. auto industry was born when brothers Charles and J. Frank Duryea of Springfield, Mass., built and sold 13 Duryea Motor-Wagons in 1896. The Motor-Wagon was the first time anyone in America had built more than one vehicle from the same set of plans.
The Motor-Wagon was powered by a water-cooled 138-cubic-inch, 6-horsepower, 2-cylinder engine; its top speed was 20 miles per hour. The car’s price: $1,500. It was not a success. Only three more were built after the original 13 were sold.
History books say George H. Morill of Norwood, Mass., bought the U.S. auto industry’s first car. Morill started the biggest trend in marketing history.
In the last 100 years, more than 463 million new cars have been sold in America. Factoring in light trucks boosts the total to 750 million vehicles.
Though the Duryea brothers’ success was fleeting, they kicked open the door for a multitude of dreamers, tinkerers and a few serious industrialists. One of them, Ransom Eli Olds, in 1897 founded an automaking company that is still going strong. Olds started the Olds Motor Vehicle Co. in Lansing, Mich., and the Oldsmobile was born.
In 1908, businessman William C. Durant bought the Buick Motor Car Co., Olds Motor Vehicle Co. and several other small automakers and founded General Motors.
Cadillac changed auto history that year by building cars with precisely machined parts. For the first time, parts such as cylinder heads and fenders could be taken off one car and put on another of the same model. Until Cadillac made these interchangeable parts, all cars had hand-fitted parts.
In late 1908, Ford introduced the Model T, and America’s auto industry started to roll. At one time, the Model T, or “Tin Lizzie,” accounted for 50 percent of all registrations in America. Ford sold more than 15 million Model T’s from 1909 to 1927.
According to the trade publication Automotive News, auto sales in America in 1910 totaled 177,796 vehicles. But by 1919, sales had grown to more than 2 million a year.
Engineering improvements made cars safer and easier to operate, and better roads were built. Cadillac also introduced the electric starter and electric lighting on its 1912 models. The starter, which replaced the difficult and sometimes dangerous hand crank, is credited with putting more women behind the wheel. When an engine misfired, the metal crank would twist backward, breaking bones or causing fatal injuries.
By 1916 nearly every car made in America had an electric starter, developed by Charles “Boss” Kettering, founder of the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co., or Delco.
In the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, improvements came quickly as engineers developed the technology that made autos safer and more powerful, dependable and luxurious. Those years saw the introduction of such things as hydraulic brakes, automatic transmissions, air conditioners and steel bodies.
From the late 1930s to the late 1970s, the evolution of the automobile was punctuated more by steady refinement than by giant leaps. Computerized fuel injection and ignition systems, adopted in the 1980s, were the biggest changes to the auto engine in decades.
Today the auto industry is being driven by consumers’ demands for safer vehicles, the government’s tightening litany of pollution and environmental regulations and the need to find a way to move cars more efficiently along America’s clogged highways.
Automakers are investing heavily in technology that will allow advanced electronic systems and computers to take over many of the driver’s functions.
Someday the driver will have less, or even nothing, to do behind the wheel, thanks to computer-driven “active safety” features that react in a split-second to dangerous road conditions.
Some of the first active safety features are on the market. For example, the Electronic Stability Program, or ESP, in the Mercedes-Benz S600 and S500 can apply the brake to just one wheel to prevent the car from swerving out of control.
“The ESP acts as an invisible and silent co-driver, able to act decisively to help restore stability under dangerous driving circumstances,” said Mercedes spokesman Fred Heiler in New Jersey.
The GM’s Buick division is preparing adaptive cruise control that can sense when the car is traveling too close to the vehicle ahead.
Michael E. Doble, Buick’s manager for advanced concepts in Flint, Mich., said Buick may have the new system on the road in as little as two years.
The new system has the potential to greatly reduce some types of highway accidents. Using radar, the system maintains a safe distance between your car and the one ahead based on the speed of both cars. If another car cuts into your lane, the adaptive cruise control takes over.
“The car, depending on the distance, knocks off throttle, downshifts the transmission and then applies brakes. All of that can happen in a microsecond,” said Doble. Buick’s XP2000 concept car was designed to use the new cruise control system.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal Department of Transportation and several automakers are developing technology for what is known as the Intelligent Transportation System.
On an ITS, or “smart highway,” sensors in the road interact with a car’s onboard computer to let the car drive itself safely at high speeds based on road and traffic conditions. The “driver” can sit in the back seat and do office work on her laptop computer, send faxes, make phone calls or plan dinner.
Late next summer, a one-lane, 14-mile stretch of Interstate Highway 15 in San Diego is expected to be the first public road in the nation to use ITS technology. Twelve Buick LeSabres will be used to test the system. If it works, ITS could be installed on all interstates in as few as 25 years, said Doble.
Automakers also are looking tentatively at more environmentally friendly ways to power automobiles.
Because the nation’s automobile infrastructure–gas stations, refineries and the like–is designed for fossil-fuel vehicles, automakers know the change to another type of fuel system, such as electricity or natural gas, would be slow and expensive.
But environmentalists and other critics say it’s time for the pollution-emitting internal combustion gasoline and diesel engines to go. But there is no alternative with the same degree of power and efficiency.
But change is coming.
In December GM became the first automaker since the 1920s to sell a mass-produced electric car. The GM EV1 is sold in Southern California and parts of Arizona. It costs about $35,000 and has a range of 70 to 90 miles before recharge.
The lack of a powerful, durable battery is hindering the viability of electric vehicles. That has caused automakers to build and test several hybrids with two types of power.
The Dodge ESX show car, for example, has a small diesel engine that runs a generator that charges batteries for the car’s electric motor. In smog-clogged cities, the ESX could operate on battery power, emitting no pollution.
Mercedes-Benz recently demonstrated an electric van called NECAR II that has no batteries; power is generated by an on-board hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell. Water is the van’s only emission.
Spokesman Heiler said Mercedes-Benz officials believe that fuel-cell electric vehicles may be the most practical alternative to internal-combustion engines.
“Battery technology is close to going about as far as it can in development potential. But in sharp contrast, fuel-cell technology is close to the beginning of its curve. The idea of producing an electric car that has no battery is a good one to us. It produces its own power with no emissions,” Heiler said.
In the future, the way we drive will change as automakers introduce high-tech solutions to meet the demand for safer, more fuel-efficient vehicles that are less harsh on the environment.
The next 100 years of automobile history just may prove more exciting than the first.
