The History of Car Industry
There were several attempts made with the thought of a car, as we know it, long before the advent of Henry Ford and the Model T. These cars were for one reason or another all wrong and it was incomprehensible to invest in a car that would only take you a mile or so, was ran by a steam engine, or did not have the capacity to be recharged. It was not until later that the advent of the auto industry really came into its own and grew to what we know today.
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Mid 1700s
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Most believe that the birth of the auto industry happened with Henry Ford, but the auto industry really came about long before that. Back in the mid 1700s, Nicolas J. Cugnot who was a French engineer designed the first auto that had the capacity to drive on a road. This auto only had three wheels, was self powered and ran by way of a steam engine. It was only capable of running for a few minutes at a time and took a long time to start up. They were also very weighty and bulky. Later, it was Oliver Evans who brought that idea to the United States, but the design never went very far.
Early 1800s
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In the early 1800s, Robert Anderson, a Scottish man, created a carriage that was ran by electricity. Anderson and U.S. native Thomas Davenport were the first to originate more appropriate autos. They used electric batteries that were not able to be recharged. These autos were only used for short distance drives and were unrealistic options for most.
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Early 1900s
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In the early 1900s the auto industry was finally taken seriously thanks to Henry Ford. Ford's invention of the car fared well, especially amongst the wealthy. It did not take long before the U.S. auto industry dominated the world with no competition whatsoever. Not many were open to criticizing the growing auto industry since it was changing all of the other industries as well as opening up brand new job potentials.
1910 to 1916
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The Model T was being produced by 1910, but the prices were extremely rich and never started falling for a few years. By 1914 over a half a million cars had been sold and the cost of one of these vehicles was near $1,000. The cars had not become very popular because of the high cost. The tides turned after World War I because the Americans generated a stream of wealth that enabled more people to purchase a vehicle. This resulted in a price drop to around $800 per car by 1916. Each year after, for about three years, annual sales of these cars doubled and tripled.
1920s
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By 1929 Ford was producing four million cars annually. The wholesale price on average was just under $700 and the average retail price was just under $900. By year's end there were over 23 million cars in the U.S. and around 75 percent of the U.S. population owned one. It did not take very long for people to start considering a car as a necessity and it became the standard way of transportation.
Late 1900s
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The U.S. dominated the auto industry for some three decades before the Japanese and the Europeans started coming up with some inventions of their own. By the 1980s the auto industry saw the surge of foreign automobiles and great transition. There were transitions in demand and fluctuations in the employment sector due to the presence of foreign competition.
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