the.com/automobile
A metal box that turns gasoline and patience into traffic jams.
means A self-powered vehicle, typically on wheels, designed to carry people on roads without needing a horse to pull it.
from Built from Greek 'autos' (self) bolted onto Latin 'mobilis' (movable) — a 19th-century hybrid coinage literally meaning 'self-mover.' French writers used 'automobile' as an adjective for self-propelled vehicles before it hardened into a noun, and the word crossed into English as the horseless carriage found its footing and needed a name as confident as the machine itself.
- name origin
- Greek auto plus Latin mobile, self plus moving
- first drivers
- needed a person walking ahead waving a flag
- average lifespan
- spends 95 percent of its life parked
- ford's trick
- moving assembly line, not the car itself, invented mass ownership