The largest car company
Daimler powered Peugeot Type 3
In 1890, Émile Levassor and Armand Peugeot of France began producing vehicles with Daimler engines, and so laid the foundation of the automotive industry in France. In 1891, Auguste Doriot and his Peugeot colleague Louis Rigoulot completed the longest trip by a petrol-driven vehicle when their self-designed and built Daimler powered Peugeot Type 3 completed 2,100 kilometres (1,300 mi) from Valentigney to Paris and Brest and back again. They were attached to the first Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle race, but finished six days after the winning cyclist, Charles Terront.
The first design for an American car with a petrol internal combustion engine was made in 1877 by George Selden of Rochester, New York. Selden applied for a patent for a car in 1879, but the patent application expired because the vehicle was never built. After a delay of 16 years and a series of attachments to his application, on 5 November 1895, Selden was granted a US patent (U.S. patent 549,160) for a two-stroke car engine, which hindered, more than encouraged, development of cars in the United States. His patent was challenged by Henry Ford and others, and overturned in 1911.
The first running
In 1893, the first running, petrol-driven American car was built and road-tested by the Duryea brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts. The first public run of the Duryea Motor Wagon took place on 21 September 1893, on Taylor Street in Metro Center Springfield.
In 1892, German engineer Rudolf Diesel was granted a patent for a “New Rational Combustion Engine”. In 1897, he built the first diesel engine. Steam-, electric-, and petrol-driven vehicles competed for a few decades, with petrol internal combustion engines achieving dominance in the 1910s. Although various pistonless rotary engine designs have attempted to compete with the conventional piston and crankshaft design, only Mazda’s version of the Wankel engine has had more than very limited success.
Increasing productivity
As a result, Ford’s cars came off the line in 15-minute intervals, much faster than previous methods, increasing productivity eightfold, while using less manpower (from 12.5 manhours to 1 hour 33 minutes).
Ford’s complex safety procedures—especially assigning each worker to a specific location instead of allowing them to roam about—dramatically reduced the rate of injury. The combination of high wages and high efficiency is called “Fordism” and was copied by most major industries. The efficiency gains from the assembly line also coincided with the economic rise of the US. The assembly line forced workers to work at a certain pace with very repetitive motions which led to more output per worker while other countries were using less productive methods.
The founding of Ford France
In the automotive industry, its success was dominating, and quickly spread worldwide seeing the founding of Ford France and Ford Britain in 1911, Ford Denmark 1923, Ford Germany 1925; in 1921, Citroën was the first native European manufacturer to adopt the production method. Soon, companies had to have assembly lines, or risk going broke; by 1930, 250 companies which did not, had disappeared.
Development of automotive technology was rapid, due in part to the hundreds of small manufacturers competing to gain the world’s attention. Key developments included electric ignition and the electric self-starter (both by Charles Kettering, for the Cadillac Motor Company in 1910–1911), independent suspension, and four-wheel brakes.