The beginnings

The first steam-powered vehicle was designed, and possibly built, by Ferdinand Verbiest in 1672.

internal combustion

The first automobile with an internal combustion engine is attributed to Karl Friedrich Benz in the city of Mannheim in 1886 with the Benz Patent-Motorwagen model.2 Shortly after, other pioneers such as Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach presented their models. The first long trip in a car was made by Bertha Benz in 1889 when going from Mannheim to Pforzheim, cities separated by about 105 km.3 It should be noted that it was a milestone in ancient automobiles, given that a car of this time had as maximum speed about 20 km/h, it used much more fuel than a vehicle uses now at that same speed and gasoline was bought in pharmacies, where it was not available in large quantities.

The assembly line

On August 31, 1908, Henry Ford began producing automobiles on an assembly line with the Ford Model T, allowing him to achieve manufacturing figures that were previously unthinkable. Ford took advantage of the push of the Industrial Revolution and began to manufacture the Model T, in series, this was something never seen before since previously all automobiles were manufactured by hand, with an artisanal process that required a lot of time. Ford's assembly line allowed it to manufacture Model Ts for almost twenty years, in which it produced fifteen million examples.