Impact of Automobile Essay

There are things and objects in our life that could not be given up when they become part of our life. Throughout the history, there have been many objects and things like that. At the prehistoric ages, that had been their hunting tool. At the medieval age, especially for men that was his horse or his domestic animal. At the modern age, those have been their automobiles. Since for now, automobiles are so important and impactful for us and our daily life in many aspects. These are cultural, economic, and environmental. Firstly, as a cultural impact, automobiles came with new concepts and thoughts in our life. Especially, when the first automobile was introduced, it was working with steams like locomotives. It is not much more than bicycle at a first glance. Also, it had many problems and continued to have a problem after its invention. Then, automobiles with gas were introduced. With gas cars, many things changed. From day by day, they became more popular. Furthermore, with Henry Ford’s assembly line, they were cheaper at that time when they compared with their ancestors. That affected the history of automobiles. The love affair between people and automobiles has begun like as it happened between men and their horse at the history. The new horse was our automobiles. After Henry Ford’s contribution, in 50’s, American’s hit the road. There were new concepts like â€Å"American muscle† and automobiles have been the inevitable part of â€Å"American dream†. After now, people have started to go to job, shopping, in short travelling to anywhere, with their cars. Indeed, with automobile history, we could see the impact over our culture and change in our lives is apparent. Moreover, economic effect is inevitable too. First of all, Carrying objects with the automobiles come with problem how much we can carry. The solution was big automobiles called trucks and buses. That changed the mass transit, individual transit and trucks transportation resulting with economic issues. Now, people can go to their works using their cars and mass transit. That could change the city life. Discarding the traffic problem, it was a miracle for men or women both to work in a city and to live in rural area. But now, millions of people live like that in most of all of countries. Also, new industry called transportation industry was born. Adding that, there are now huge amount of earnings from mass transit, taxes, ticket collection. By using this money, government could spend on other issues in a country. As a conclusion, automobiles have another impact over economic events. Finally, environmental impact is another big aspect of the subject. At first, no matter how automobiles are miracle for our lives, environmental pollution increase is the problematic part of them. Think about several millions of people are smoking in the area of sized city. That could be harmful for us as well as environment. Now think that, these smoking people are now automobiles. That is destructive for the nature, come up with diseases for living beings. Even in some areas, the number of cars is equal to the number of people. So, from now on non-polluting cars are popular and will be much more popular in the near future. For example, hybrid cars can be seen on streets as a price of middle class cars. These cars are the friend of nature, and some of them have zero carbon emission. There are also some alternatives such as cars with hydrogen fuel. Since combustible with carbon results with carbon dioxide, hydrogen cars give water to the nature. This is another miracle for the car history. As human beings try to find solutions to every problem, we will try to find forthcoming problems of automobiles as we have done in the past. In conclusion, cars have several impacts on our lives. They have changed our lifestyle, living habits, city lives. They have also great effect on transportation and mass transit. Finally, they changed the way we think to our nature and environment. Indeed, we could not live without automobiles. They will change their technology and appearance but the way that we use in our lives may not change. And from generation to generation, we will have new habits and things as it was happened in the past. The invention of the automobile was without doubt one of the most groundbraking advancements in human technology. Today we can not imagine a world without it anymore. A large portion of our everyday life is dominated by cars – they are important not only while we are actually driving. The noise they produce, the streets built for them or the possibilities they offer are always a part of our perception. Doubtlessly cars have an enormous economic value. Without the automobile and derivations like trucks, the productivity of a modern economy would seriously be affected. The biggest part of transportation of goods is still conducted by trucks. But the automobile does not only contribute to modern economies as a means of transportation. It also has profound effects on the availability and distribution of working places. Having a car largely increases a family’s mobility and flexibility. Because of the possibility to commute the advantages of life on the countryside can still be enjoyed while being occupied in an urban region. This is also a part of the change in lifestyle made by the spreading of the automobile. Children can now be raised in a non-urban environment even if their parents work in the city center. Cars may also contribute to a strenghtening of family ties especially if the members live in distant regions. It may be much more agreeable to cover such distances by car than by other means of transportation. Last but not least cars can be considered an addition to personal freedom. They facilitate travelling, make it possible to eperience larger parts of a country and thus increase a person’s horizon. On the other hand, cars are linked to a variety of problems. The most important of which are environmental ones. Cars are one of the biggest contributor to all kinds of pollution. A large proportion of the total amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans originates from the use of cars. Thus they contribute to the depletion of the ozon layer as well as to global warming. They also add to the pollution of densly inhabitated regions by producing noise and as the main factor in the widespread phenomena called ‘smog’. The increased mobility also contributed to a development which is widely known as urban sprawl, which is the extensive development of suburbs and vice versa the declension of city centers. Furthermore taking into account the yearly number of deaths in traffic it is obvious that cars also produce a lot of problems which have to be tackled in order to fully enjoy this invention. Through continuous improvement and the ingenious application of new technology, the automobile reconfirmed and updated its status as a triumph of engineering throughout the 20th century. I was fortunate to witness and participate in one of the most significant stages of this ongoing transformation. When I joined the industry in 1949, automobiles were still literally just mechanical objects. By the time I retired 40 years later they had become complex electronic devices on wheels. The first semiconductor computer chip went onboard in the mid-1970s. Before long, microprocessors were improving just about every aspect of the vehicle—emissions, fuel economy, safety, security, engine and transmission performance, ride and handling, even seat positioning. Electronics also transformed cars and trucks into mobile entertainment and communication centers. During my years in the industry, there were other profound changes that challenged the engineering community. Government regulations in the 1960s mandated cleaner, safer, more fuel-efficient vehicles in a rapid time frame. In the 1970s increasing global competition brought a surge of high-quality, low-cost competitive products from overseas into the United States. American manufacturers were painfully reminded of the fundamental importance of quality and took on the challenge of making our vehicles world class once again. We had to relearn some of the lessons of manufacturing excellence, such as the critical need for standardized, precision-made parts, that we had taught the world at the beginning of the century. Shortly after I became president of Ford Motor Company I saw a television program—If Japan Can, Why Can’t We? —that described Toyota’s success in improving quality and gave W. Edwards Deming major credit for Toyota’s success. I met with Ed Deming and liked his ideas for improving quality and his emphasis on the importance of people. Peter Drucker also was involved in the Japanese resurgence and emphasized people. For me personally these two men were a major help in forming the ways we worked together to improve product quality. We began engaging people at all levels and in all functions in what became known as the employee involvement movement in the 1980s. Encouraging everyone to participate and channeling individual and team efforts toward well-defined common goals produced remarkable results. As measured by owner-reported â€Å"things gone wrong,† vehicle quality improved more than 60 percent from 1980 to 1987 models. Breakthrough products such as the radically aerodynamic 1986 Ford Taurus helped convince consumers that American manufacturers could not only decrease defects but also increase design and engineering attributes that maximized product appeal. Today the automobile remains the most voracious consumer of new technology of any product in the marketplace. And promising new technological developments, such as the use of fuel cells as a power source, will undoubtedly keep the automobile on the leading edge of technology in the 21st century. But whatever shape the technology takes and wherever it leads us, we would do well to remember the lesson we learned in the 1980s to honor and encourage the people behind new ideas. The History of the Automobile Starting in the late 1700’s, European engineers began tinkering with motor powered vehicles. Steam, combustion, and electrical motors had all been attempted by the mid 1800’s. By the 1900’s, it was uncertain which type of engine would power the automobile. At first, the electric car was the most popular, but at the time a battery did not exist that would allow a car to move with much speed or over a long distance. Even though some of the earlier speed records were set by electric cars, they did not stay in production past the first decade of the 20th century. The steam-driven automobile lasted into 1920’s. However, the price on steam powered engines, either to build or maintain was incomparable to the gas powered engines. Not only was the price a problem, but the risk of a boiler explosion also kept the steam engine from becoming popular. The combustion engine continually beat out the competition, and the early American automobile pioneers like Ransom E. Olds and Henry Ford built reliable combustion engines, rejecting the ideas of steam or electrical power from the start. Automotive production on a commercial scale started in France in 1890. Commercial production in the United States began at the beginning of the 1900’s and was equal to that of Europe’s. In those days, the European industry consisted of small independent firms that would turn out a few cars by means of precise engineering and handicraft methods. The American automobile plants were assembly line operations, which meant using parts made by independent suppliers and putting them together at the plant. In the early 1900’s, the United States had about 2,000 firms producing one or more cars. By 1920 the number of firms had decreased to about 100 and by 1929 to 44. In 1976 the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association had only 11 members. The same situation occurred in Europe and Japan. The first automobile produced for the masses in the US was the three-horsepower, curved-dash Oldsmobile; 425 of them were sold in 1901 and 5,000 in 1904–this model is still prized by collectors. The firm prospered, and it was noted by others, and, from 1904 to 1908, 241 automobile-manufacturing firms went into business in the United States. One of these was the Ford Motor Company which was organized in June 1903, and sold its first car on the following July 23. The company produced 1,700 cars during its first full year of business. Henry Ford produced the Model T to be an economical car for the average American. By 1920 Ford sold over a million cars. At the beginning of the century the automobile entered the transportation market as a toy for the rich. However, it became increasingly popular among the general population because it gave travelers the freedom to travel when they wanted to and where they wanted. As a result, in North America and Europe the automobile became cheaper and more accessible to the middle class. This was facilitated by Henry Ford who did two important things. First he priced his car to be as affordable as possible and second, he paid his workers enough to be able to purchase the cars they were manufacturing. This helped push wages and auto sales upward. The convenience of the automobile freed people from the need to live near rail lines or stations; they could choose locations almost anywhere in an urban area, as long as roads were available to connect them to other places. Many states in the US established motor fuel taxes that were used only to build and maintain highways helping the auto highway system become self-supporting. Popularity of the automobile has consistently moved with the state of the economy, growing during the boom period after World War I and dropping abruptly during the Great Depression, when unemployment was high. World War II saw a large increase in mass transit because employment was high and automobiles were scarce. The rapid growth of car owners after World War II, particularly in the United States and Western Europe demonstrated the population’s favor towards automobiles. During the war, automobile motors, fuel, and tires were in short supply. There was an unsatisfied demand when the war ended and plenty of production capacity as factories turned off the war machine. Many people had saved money because there was little to buy, beyond necessities, in the war years. Workers relied heavily on mass transportation during the war and longed for the freedom and flexibility of the automobile. A historian has said that Henry Ford freed common people from the limitations of their geography. The automobile created mobility on a scale never known before, and the total effect on living habits and social customs is endless. In the days of horse-drawn transportation, the practical limit of wagon travel was 10 to 15 miles, so that meant any community or individual farm more than 15 miles from a city, a railroad, or a navigable waterway was isolated from the mainstream of economic and social life. Motor vehicles and paved roads have narrowed the gap between rural and urban life. Farmers can ship easily and economically by truck and can drive to town when it is convenient. In addition, such institutions as regional schools and hospitals are now accessible by bus and car. Yet, the effect on city life has been, if anything, more prominent than the effect on the farms. The automobile has radically changed city life by accelerating the outward expansion of population into the suburbs. The suburban trend is emphasized by the fact that highway transportation encourages business and industry to move outward to sites where land is cheaper, where access by car and truck is easier than in crowded cities, and where space is available for their one or two story structures. Better roads were constructed, which further increased travel throughout the nation. As with other automobile-related phenomena, the trend is most noticeable in the United States but is rapidly appearing elsewhere in the world. Before the automobile, people both lived in the city and worked in the city, or lived in the country and worked on a farm. Because of the automobile, the growth of suburbs has allowed people to live on the outskirts of the city and be able to work in the city by commuting. New jobs due to the impact of the automobile such as fast food, city/highway construction, state patrol/police, convenience stores, gas stations, auto repair shops, auto shops, etc. allow more employment for the world’s growing population.