Having your own car gives you freedom and convenience. You don’t have to rely on the schedules and routes of public transportation, or worry about how far you can travel on foot. You can also go on road trips with your family or friends, exploring new roads and destinations. However, there are some disadvantages to owning a vehicle like traffic jams and parking limitations in urban areas.
An automobile is a wheeled motor vehicle intended for passenger transportation, manufactured by one of the world’s largest industries and fueled mostly by petroleum products (gasoline or diesel fuel). The automobile revolutionized society and created new jobs. Industries developed to produce automobile parts and to provide services, such as gas stations and convenience stores. The automobile gave people more freedom of movement, and many cities grew with highways to accommodate the increase in car traffic.
Automobiles were first introduced to the United States in the late 1800s and quickly became a dominant force in industry. The American auto companies developed mass production techniques that made it possible to manufacture cars at a low cost. This in turn led to economic growth, improved highway systems and a huge expansion of industry that produced automobiles, tires, rubber, glass and plastics, and other raw materials.
In the postwar era automobile engineering was subordinated to nonfunctional styling and the pursuit of higher unit profits, while complaints about pollution, dwindling world oil reserves, and high fuel prices caused some consumers to switch from American cars to imported Japanese models. As a result, by the 1970s Detroit’s production of fuel-efficient, functionally designed and well-built small cars lost ground to its competitors.
A healthy automotive sector supports 9.6 million American jobs, including those in suppliers and parts manufacturers, and provides a substantial portion of the nation’s manufacturing revenue. It also helps drive our economy by creating and sustaining cutting-edge facilities that assemble millions of vehicles for sale to customers across America and the globe. In addition, automakers invest in communities by creating local jobs and supporting a wide range of local economic development projects.
