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An automobile or motor car is a wheeled motor vehicle for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor. Most definitions of the term specify that automobiles are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels, and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods.[1] However, the term "automobile" is far from precise, because there are many types of vehicles that do similar tasks. The full original name is Automobile carriage which has transformed through natural language evolution into the shorter forms automobile, auto, car, and even bil (the latter Swedish). Automobile comes via the French language, from the Greek language by combining auto [self] with mobilis [moving]; meaning a vehicle that moves itself, rather than being pulled or pushed by a separate animal or another vehicle. The alternative name car is believed to originate from the Latin word carrus or carrum [wheeled vehicle], or the Middle English word carre [cart] (from Old North French), and karros; a Gallic wagon.[2][3] As of 2002, there were 590 million passenger cars worldwide (roughly one car per eleven people).[4] Although Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769 by adapting an existing horse-drawn vehicle, this claim is disputed by some, who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran or was stable. Others claim Ferdinand Verbiest, a member of a Jesuit mission in China, built the first steam-powered vehicle around 1672 which was of small scale and designed as a toy for the Chinese Emperor that was unable to carry a driver or a passenger, but quite possibly, was the first working steam-powered vehicle ('auto-mobile').[5][6] What is not in doubt is that Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive in 1801, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle although it was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and would have been of little practical use.
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