Putting wheels on sledges to make them into carts was the crucial next step. One of the final truly great inventions of the prehistoric era was the wheel, which first appeared approximately 3500 BCE. Nobody is really certain how wheels were created. It's possible that some early humans were using tree trunks as wheels to move a large load when they suddenly realised they could slice the logs like salami and create wheels out of the slices. The wheel, however it was created, represented a significant advancement since it allowed both humans and animals to move heavier loads farther and faster.

The first solid wheels were enormous and difficult to carve, and they were more square than round. When someone came up with the brilliant idea to construct lighter, rounder wheels from distinct.

Trevithick and Evans eventually shifted their focus to creating steam trains, but Goldsworthy Gurney (1793–1875), another Cornish innovator, believed the concept of steam road cars still had some clout. Really literally. He created an antique steam carriage that would move like a horse on flimsy pins. Gurney created spectacular steam buses and operated a service between London and Bath after realising wheels could perform the job much better. Ultimately, horse-powered stage coaches that were speedier and more affordable forced him out of business. When one of his buses burst on July 29, 1834, killing four passengers, John Scott Russell (1808–1882) was forced to close another promising steam-coach enterprise.

A car is comparable to a cart with a built-in horse; it is a horseless carriage that travels without consuming any grass, donning shoes, or leaving behind a sizzling mound of mud. How to pack the power of a charging horse into a compact, dependable engine presented a significant challenge for the engineers who set out to build the first vehicles.

The brightest brains of the day struggled with this challenging issue. The initial attempt to solve it had involved using steam, but while coal-powered steam engines were great for pulling trains, they weren't as effective for moving vehicles. You had to transport a mini-mountain of coal in addition to the clunking huge engine itself, along with a tank of water

The renowned Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), who possessed the inventive talent of Leonardo da Vinci and the laser-like intellect of Isaac Newton, served as an inspiration to the engineers. He made numerous astronomical discoveries, developed probability theory, created the first pendulum clock, created the musical keyboard, and found that light moves in waves. Huygens developed a concept for an engine that produced power by exploding gunpowder in a tube in the late 17th century. He was much ahead of his time, which was a problem because engineering wasn't yet advanced enough for him to build this contraption. If it had been, about 200 years earlier, automobiles may have been commonplace.