Automobiles are vehicles that carry a driver and a few passengers, often also some cargo. They are powered by internal combustion engines using a volatile fuel. Cars have a wide variety of designs. Their systems include components that control and drive them, power their wheels and provide electricity for lights.

Toward the end of the 19th century Germany became the centre of automobile-making with Nikolaus Otto, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz developing petrol driven engines. In America the industry was dominated by Henry Ford who developed modern mass production techniques in his Highland Park plant with workers concentrating on one task while car parts passed on conveyer belts. Ford’s Model T was so successful that by 1927 fifteen million had been sold and mass personal “automobility” had become a reality.

Today cars are produced in the millions every year. They are essential to the economies of many countries and transport a majority of people in most developed societies. They give millions of jobs to people who make or repair them, operate service stations or sell gasoline or diesel. But they also create problems that affect us all. Millions of people die in road accidents and the emissions from automobiles pollute the air that we breathe. Automobiles require huge amounts of energy to operate and they are a drain on the world’s oil supplies.

Almost all manufacturers employ research and development engineers to improve the body, chassis, engine, transmission, drivetrain, electronics and control systems, electrical equipment and safety and emission-control devices. These technical improvements are the result of engineering breakthroughs and of new materials such as high-strength plastics and new alloys of steel and nonferrous metals.