In addition to the men above, many other individuals contributed to the continual advancement of engine technology that eventually resulted in the functioning automobile. These include:. The crediting of Benz with the first automobile engine is disputed, however. In the s, a two-cycle combustion engine was created by a man named Siegfried Marcus.
In , Marcus introduced a four-cycle, gasoline-powered engine in a vehicle. This led to Marcus being honored, during his lifetime, as the originator of the motorcar.
They did this because Marcus had Jewish heritage. Other Contributors In addition to the men above, many other individuals contributed to the continual advancement of engine technology that eventually resulted in the functioning automobile.
These include: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, who, in , created the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation. The young Diesel's life was changed by a lecture on thermodynamics at the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, where he learned that it was theoretically possible to make an internal combustion engine that would convert all heat into work.
Diesel set himself the task of translating theory into practice. He failed. Diesel's engine is more efficient partly because of how it ignites the fuel. Petrol engines compress fuel and air together, then ignite it with a spark plug.
But compress the mixture too much and it can self-ignite, which causes destabilising engine knock. Diesel's invention compresses only the air, and more so, making it hot enough to ignite the fuel when it's injected. And the higher the compression ratio, the less fuel is needed. Anyone who's researched buying a car will be familiar with the basic trade-off of a Diesel engine - they tend to be more expensive to buy, but more economical to run. Unfortunately for Rudolf, in early versions these efficiency gains were outweighed by reliability issues.
He faced a steady stream of refund demands from unhappy customers. This dug the inventor into the financial hole from which he could not escape. Still, he kept working at his engine, and it kept improving. Other advantages became apparent. Diesel engines can use a heavier fuel than petrol engines - specifically, a heavier fuel that's become known as "diesel". As well as being cheaper than petrol to refine from crude oil, diesel also gives off fewer fumes, so it's less likely to cause explosions.
This made it particularly attractive for military transport. By , Diesel had got his engines into France's submarines. This brings us to the first conspiracy theory around Rudolf Diesel's death.
In Europe, the drumbeats of impending war were quickening, and the cash-strapped German was en route to London. One newspaper headline luridly speculated: "Inventor thrown into the sea to stop sale of patents to British government. It was only after World War One that Diesel's invention began to realise its commercial potential. The first diesel-powered trucks appeared in the s, trains in the s.
By a quarter of global sea trade was fuelled by diesel. After World War Two, ever more powerful and efficient diesel engines led to ever more enormous ships. Scientist Vaclav Smil argues that steam-powered globalisation would have grown much more slowly than diesel allowed. The economist Brian Arthur isn't so sure. He describes the rise of the internal combustion engine over the past century as "path dependence": a self-reinforcing cycle in which existing investments and infrastructure mean we keep doing things in a certain way, even if we'd do them differently if only we could start from scratch.
As late as , Arthur argues, steam was at least as viable as crude oil for powering cars - but the growing influence of the oil industry ensured that much more money went into improving the internal combustion engine than the steam engine. Over , electric cars sold in the United States just in , with more than half of those in California alone. This technology, like the internal combustion engine, also has a long history that is difficult to point to one inventor.
Two inventors are typically credited with independently inventing the first electric car: Robert Anderson, a Scottish inventor, and Thomas Davenport, an American inventor, in the s, according to AutomoStory. The first rechargeable battery was invented in by Gaston Plante, a French physicist, which replaced the non-rechargable batteries used in early models of the electric car.
A few of the innovations following include:. Electric cars continued to gain popularity and in , the first automobile race in the United States — a mile "dash" from Chicago to Waukegan, Ill.
By , the New York City taxi service had about 60 electric cars and approximately a third of cars in the United States were electric, according to the Department of Energy. When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in , the inexpensive and high quality gasoline powered car became very popular and the decline of electric cars began, according to the Department of Energy.
By the s, gasoline had become cheaper and more readily available, and more Americans were traveling greater distances. Electric cars didn't have the range that gas-powered cars had, and electricity was still not readily available in many rural cities, making the gasoline-powered cars the automobiles of choice.
In , Congress passed the Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act due to rising oil prices, gasoline shortages and dependencies on foreign oil. Many car companies began to research and design new fuel-efficient and electric options, although not much happened until the s.
The Toyota Prius, developed and released in Japan in , was the world's first mass-produced hybrid car and was available around the world by The Honda Insight hybrid car was released in the United States in Tesla Motors began development and production on a luxury all-electric car that would travel more than two hundred miles on a single charge in with the first model released in The Chevrolet Volt , released in , was the first available plug-in hybrid that used the gasoline engine to extend the range of the automobile when the battery was depleted.
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