1826: Englishman Samuel Brown altered a steam engine to burn gasoline and put it on a carriage, but this proto-automobile also never gained widespread adoption.1680: Christiaan Huygens, better known for his contributions as an astronomer, designed but never built an internal combustion engine fueled by gunpowder.The 'automobile', as they call it in America, was itself an import from the French," Tom Standage, author of " A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next (opens in new tab)" (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) told All About History (opens in new tab) magazine. The word 'car' became available to what was previously called a 'horseless carriage' or possibly a motor car.
Streetcars before that were 'horse cars' which were omnibuses pulled by horses on rails. At the end of the 19th Century, a car was a “streetcar” i.e. "The word 'car' has meant different things at different times. The cart, designed to move artillery pieces, moved at a walking pace (2 mph or 3.2 km/h) and had to stop every 20 minutes to build a new head of steam. Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, a Frenchman, built a self-propelled vehicle with a steam engine in 1769.
Sailing chariots, propelled by the wind were in use in China when the first Westerners visited, and in 1600, Simon Steven of Holland built one that carried 28 people and covered 39 miles (63 km) in two hours, according to General Motors.However, a replica is on display at the Chateau Clos Lucé (opens in new tab), Leonardo's last home and now a museum. Like many of his designs, it wasn't built in his lifetime. Leonardo da Vinci had sketched a horseless, mechanized cart in the early 1500s.