Before petrol won, cars ran on clockwork, steam, hydrogen and batteries
In 1878 Wisconsin staged America's first city-to-city car race, offering a prize for any machine that could replace horses. Seven vehicles registered, two started, and the faster one broke down. The steam-powered winner averaged about 9.7 kilometres an hour, and the legislature paid out only half the money.
The search for a self-moving carriage was mostly a search for a dependable portable engine. In 1649 Hans Hautsch of Nuremberg built a carriage driven by clockwork. Around 1672 the Jesuit missionary Ferdinand Verbiest made a small steam vehicle in China as a toy for the Kangxi Emperor, too small to carry a driver. Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot's steam artillery tractor followed in France but proved impractical, and innovation moved to Britain, where Richard Trevithick was driving a full-sized steam vehicle on roads in Camborne by 1801.
Britain then throttled its own head start. Opponents priced steam coaches out of business with inflated turnpike tolls, and the Locomotives Act 1865 made every mechanically powered road vehicle follow a walker carrying a red flag. Road transport there stayed hobbled until motorists won repeal in 1896 for vehicles under 3 tons.
Other power sources were tried in parallel. In 1806 François Isaac de Rivaz built an engine burning hydrogen and oxygen, and in 1826 Samuel Brown drove a hydrogen-engined vehicle up Shooter's Hill in London. Etienne Lenoir's Hippomobile took about three hours to cover roughly 9 kilometres in 1860. Electric cars were popular around the turn of the twentieth century, until the electric starter, greater range, quick refuelling and cheaper mass-produced gasoline cars pushed them out of markets such as the US by the 1930s.
Carl Benz produced the first practical, marketable car in 1886 and built several identical copies, making it the first series production. Ransom Olds used interchangeable parts to make thousands of Oldsmobiles by 1903, and Ford's moving assembly line from 1913 cut the Model T's price by almost half, putting cars within reach of ordinary buyers.
Source: History of the automobile
