Car Facts for Kids

The very first gasoline-powered automobile, patented by Karl Benz in January 1886, was a three-wheeled wonder!

It had a tiny engine that only produced about two-thirds of one horsepower (0.50 kW).

That’s way less than your lawnmower! It only went about 10 mph (16 km/h) max. Imagine taking over an hour just to go 10 miles!

The original cost back then was 600 imperial German marks, which is like only about $5,200 in today’s money for the very first car!

Your family car isn't just one big chunk of metal-it has about 30,000 individual parts! That includes everything from the huge engine block down to the tiniest screws.

Think about it-that's 15 times more parts than the first Benz car had in its entire body!

The engine alone has thousands of pieces all moving perfectly, like an incredibly complex clock for kids to learn about.

The current land speed record belongs to the Thrust SSC, which sped to an unbelievable 763.035 mph on October 15, 1997!

That speed is faster than the speed of sound-it created a sonic boom! That’s like driving 1,227.986 kilometers per hour!

To compare, if you drove that fast for just one second, you would travel over 1,120 feet-that's longer than an entire football field!

When the Ford Model T arrived in 1908, it cost only $850! This was revolutionary because other cars cost up to $3,000.

Henry Ford used an amazing new thing called the assembly line to build them faster and cheaper.

By 1924, his assembly line was so good that the price dropped all the way down to $300 for a kid to potentially afford!

The Guinness World Record for the longest car goes to "The American Dream" limo, measuring a massive 30.54 meters (100 feet and 1.50 inches) long as of March 2022!

This super-limo was first built in 1986 and rolled on 26 wheels to hold it up.

It even has fun stuff like a swimming pool and a helipad on the roof-that’s one epic party bus for kids!

Before gas cars took over, electric cars were super popular! By the year 1900, electric vehicles made up about one-third of all cars on the road in the US.

The first successful US electric car was made by William Morrison around 1890 and could carry six passengers at a top speed of 14 mph.

They were great because they didn't need messy hand-cranking to start like early gas cars did!

The company that makes Peugeot cars today is actually the oldest car brand that still exists, but they didn't start with cars!

The Peugeot family business began way back in 1810 making things like coffee mills and kitchen tools in France.

They didn't even build their first car until 1890, which means their company has been around for over 200 years!

You might think new cars are lighter, but the average car today weighs about 1.4 tons (or around 2,800 pounds for a standard sedan).

Back in the 1970s, cars were lighter, often weighing only about 1 ton (2,000 pounds).

This is because modern cars have lots more safety stuff like stronger frames and many more airbags inside for crash protection!

The idea of a car driving itself without a human driver has been around for a long time. The first vehicle driven entirely by computer was in 1986!

But the BIG moment for self-driving cars was in 1994 when computers controlled the gas, steering, and brakes of two cars driving right alongside regular traffic on France's Autoroute 1.

These early computers were part of the EUREKA Prometheus Project, which spent a huge €749 million on autonomous car research!

Remember the Thrust SSC from Fact #3? It wasn't just fast-it was unbelievably powerful!

It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Spey 202 jet engines that created a combined 50,000 pounds of thrust.

That's like having the pushing power of 50,000 full-grown elephants all shoving the car forward at once! What an engine!