Car Facts

You may be driving cars for years now, but do you really know the current state of driving in the world right now?

In this article, we’ve systematically organized facts and up-to-date stats below.

If you want to click on the category you want to read about, you can just click on the corresponding title here.

One of the most important inventions made in the 19th century was the car. Back in the years, people had to rely on physical horse stamina just to make it to another country, city, or even the nearest town. And most of the time, it would take days to months to get to another country.  The innovation that is, a car, changed that forever. 

• 1886: The first car was invented, patented, and designed by Carl Benz.
• 1890: The first electric vehicle was invented by William Morrison.
• 1908: The Ford Model T, the first mass-produced car, came to be.
• 1904: In Dayton, Ohio, the first paper citation for speeding was given.
• 1914: Henry Ford pioneered growth and good compensation to his labor workers in January.
• 1914: The traffic signal was first installed.
• 1921: The Automatic transmission was built and patented in 1923.
• 1959: Nils Bohlin created the first three-point seatbelt for Volvo.
• 1997: The fastest land speed recorded was 763 mph last October.
• 2018: Lead acid batteries became the most recycled.
• 2019: Average vehicle’s one-way commute was 27.6 minutes. 
• 2019: About 80% of a car can be recycled.
• 2020: Over 44,014 Full-sized Ford F-150 Pick-up cars were stolen.
• 2020: Only 2.4 % out of the 25% of vehicles using manual transmission back in 1995 remains.
• 2020: 65% of the world drives on the right.
• 2020: The average age of a vehicle is 12.1 years with 12,500 miles per driver.
• 2021: Toyota has sold over 20,820 vehicles per day.
• 2021: An average car’s price have risen to $47,077. 
• 2021: Distracted driving led to road fatalities with 3,142 deaths.
• 2021: Around 1,400 lbs of coal can be produced out of automobile recycling. Along with 2,500 lbs iron ore, and 120 lbs of limestone extraction.
• 2022: An estimated 290.8 Million registered cars are projected.
• 2022: The oldest car in the world, the 1884 De Dion Bouton Et Trepardoux Dos-A-Dos Steam Runabout, is 138 years old.
• 2022: In a day, Toyota makes 20 vehicles per minute.
• 2024: 72% autonomous vehicles are projected to rise which around 54.2 Million. 

1. Overspeeding is the leading cause of accidents and road fatalities.
2. 40% of licensed drivers will fail the written exam if they took it today.
3. Auto accidents can cause an estimated 5,000 permanent injuries to people every day.
4. Teen drivers have the highest rate of traffic accidents.
5. Over 60% of all traffic accidents are caused due to aggressive driving with male drivers around the ages of 19-39 at risk.
6. There are nearly 30% of pedestrian fatalities for the past 10 years: bicyclists, joggers, or pedestrians crossing intersections included.
7. Driving in poor weather is extremely dangerous. 
8. Around 30% of children, under the age of five years, out of a total of around 250 people, die due to reverse driving.
9. Over 3,000 lives are lost due to vehicular accidents each day, you can round that off to more than 1,000,000 traffic accident deaths every year. This has since been increasing since 2007.
10. Half of the total number of road accidents, including motorcycle fatalities, are higher in rural areas despite the bustling traffic in urban areas. As for work zones, they are dangerous areas with one fatality in every 4 billion miles of driving.

• Over 660,000 drivers worldwide are using their cell phones while driving.
• 60% of young adults ages 18 and above text and email while driving compared to 16% of teens around the ages of 15-16.
• 35% of teens admit to texting and driving regardless of knowing the dangers of doing so.
• Around 1 out of 4 teens respond to a single text message while driving.
• 20% of teenage drivers and 10% of parents admit to having multiple text conversations while driving.
• An average driving time of 10% is spent by teenagers outside of their traffic lanes.
• Around 9% or 26, 004 road fatalities were tallied due to driving while distracted in the years 2012-2019. These numbers rose to 10% as of this time of writing.
• 16-24-year-olds have had higher rates in driving while using handheld gadgets compared to older drivers since 2007.
• In 2019 fatal crashes, 9% of 15-19-year-old drivers were involved and found to be driving while distracted.
• There were 566 dead involved in 2019, including pedestrians, cyclists, and others, due to distracted drivers.

Image credit: https://guardiansafeandvault.com/

(image credits: Guardian Safe and Vault)

• 2020: 72% of share in the EV Market comes from Tesla as compared to the 80%.
• 2021: Over 72% of the vehicles sold in Norway were electric.
• 2021: The top-selling EV company in the US is Tesla, with over 302,000 units sold.
• 2021: Tesla Model 3 topped the EU charts with over 141,000 units sold.
• 2021: Toyota switched 500,000 Toyota and Lexus cars to EV.
• 2022: 20% of new vehicles sold in February were (Electronic Vehicles) EVs and (Plugin Electronic Vehicles) PHEVs
• 2022: The 17 out of 20 best-selling EV brands were Chinese and 290k vehicles were sold in China. Which is around 176% of sales from a year ago.
• 2022: The cheapest electric vehicle in EU which you can buy is the Dacia Spring Electric.
• 2025: 14 million is the projected sales for EV vehicles.
• 2027: Global EV Market projected sales is 1.2 trillion USD.

• 2020-2027: A Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.7% is expected out of the global car industry.
• Each year, the global rental car market earns an estimated $40.65 billion.
• 2021: An estimate of $28.1 billion is earned by the U.S. Global rental car market revenue.
• 2027: An estimated worth of $144.21 billion in revenue is estimated to get seen by the global car rental market.

• 1939: The first autonomous vehicle concept was unveiled at the World's Fair in New York. 
• Annually, the global market for autonomous vehicles expands tp 16%.
• Waymo has 600 autonomous vehicles. 
• Per million miles traveled, there are 9.1 crashes involving automated vehicles. 
• Waymo's self-driving vehicles have been in 18 accidents in the past 20 months. 
• 11 Tesla self-driving cars have been produced in the last four years in which there have been reported accidents. 
• There have been about 37 accidents involving Uber test vehicles overall. 
• 55% of smaller businesses believe that their cars will be totally autonomous in 20 years.

Over-Wheel Winglets.

For the first time, over-wheel winglets will be installed on Formula One race cars in 2022. The over-wheel winglets assist in directing air away from the rear wing and controlling air flowing off the front tires. These are designed to increase the aerodynamic resilience of the new F1 vehicles in close racing. 

Wheel Covers Have Returned. 

The wheel covers that were abolished in 2009 are reinstated for the F1 vehicles in 2022. The purpose of the wheel covers is to direct airflow into the wheels, which aids in boosting downforce and ultimately improves the vehicle's stability. Additionally, this exacerbates the erratic aerodynamic wake created by the cars.

Tyres With a Low Profile and 18-inch Wheels. 

In place of the customary 13-inch wheels, the 2022 Formula One race cars will debut 18-inch wheels covered in low-profile tyres. The Japanese business BB will provide the wheels, and Pirelli will produce the tires. The larger wheels are said to provide better stability and aerodynamic efficiency, and the tyres have been developed to lessen the overheating problem. 

Redesigned Front Nose and Wings.

The 2022 Formula One race cars have fully new front wings and noses. The revised front-wing design is intended to produce consistent downforce during close running and to guarantee that the front-wheel wake is carefully managed and routed down the car without interference.

Retro-Style Aero Feature. 

The Formula One race cars of 2022 will have a retro aero element. The F1 race vehicles were once fashioned after an upside-down airplane wing in the late 1970s. The race cars were pushed into the track, which in the past produced a significant amount of downforce. The 2022 automobiles have fully contoured underfloor tunnels that enable the production of significant downforce.

Fuel Sustainability.

The F1 race cars in 2022 will use more environmentally friendly fuel. The F1 cars are required to use fuel that contains 5.75 percent bio-components under current standards. The bio-component ratio will increase to 10% starting in 2022. E10 fuel will be used in order to do this. Ethanol must be produced as a sustainable second-generation biofuel to guarantee a carbon footprint that is almost zero.

Security is A Priority.

The design of the F1 race vehicles for 2022 has prioritized safety. The chassis of the latest generation Formula One car is capable of absorbing 48 percent and 15 percent more energy in front and rear impact testing, respectively. Additionally, they can withstand stronger forces during the static squeeze tests needed to homologate the chassis and vouch for their strength.

7,500 Simulations.

The 2022 Formula One race vehicles were produced after 7,500 simulations were run, producing about half a gigabyte of data. This translates to 10 billion Facebook photographs or 10 million four-drawer file cabinets full of text. It required 16.5 million core hours to complete those 7,500 simulations.

1. Ford Motor Company's founder Henry Ford is well-known for many things, both good and bad, but his oddest eccentricity may have been requesting Thomas Edison's son to record his father's final breath in a tube, seal it with a cork, and then bring it to him so he can have it as a memento. 
2. The Moroccan ruler purchased the very first Daimler luxury car way back in 1889. By the way, the car appeared, it was clear that the sultan had a taste.
3. You've probably heard the rumor that BMW designed its emblem with a propeller in motion. It turns out that this story is untrue. The logo was actually influenced by the blue and white of Bavaria. For additional information, view this video from the BMW official channel. 
4. Have you ever been taken aback by a piece of fascinating information that was hiding in plain sight? It turns out that Fiat is an acronym for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, which is merely another way of saying Italian Automobile Factory, Turin. 
5. General Motors (GM) intends to introduce self-driving Chevy Bolts for taxi services by the end of 2019.
6. The first automaker to provide a 10-year/100,000-mile warranty was Hyundai. While most automakers now provide extended warranties for new cars, Geico and other insurance providers provide a warranty that is even more affordable. 
7. It is not surprising that a company like Toyota produces the most popular car in the world. Its Corolla model has shipped more than 40 million cars globally. Every 27 to 37 seconds, one is sold. 
8. PSA Groupe set the record for the lightest commercial vehicles sold in 2018 with 289,500 units. 
9. In 1955, Tata entered three of its trucks in the 8,000-mile Geneva-Bombay Rally to demonstrate the quality of its goods; not a single failure occurred.
10. Honda produces more than just automobiles and motorcycles. Since the commodity was in high demand in the land of the rising sun and Honda had already established its operations in Ohio, the corporation started exporting soybeans from the US to Japan in 1986.

• In 1769, a full-scale mechanical vehicle with self-propulsion was unveiled. It was a tricycle propelled by steam that was used to transport artillery across the city. (But 8,000 pounds of it!) 
• The first modern automobile is thought to have been the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. In 1886, German inventor Carl Benz submitted a patent application, and his wife later drove a long-distance vehicle for the first time. 
• The Ford Model T was the first mass-produced car, debuting in 1913. A record-breaking 55 percent of all cars on the road three years later were Model Ts, which is still standing today. 
• Pontiac dominated the muscle scene in the early 1960s, but by 1968, that car had plenty of competitors. The 1964 Pontiac GTO is frequently referred to as the original "muscle car."
• In 1964, the Ford Mustang also made its premiere. At the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, it was formally unveiled. The vehicle made its premiere in dealerships all around the country on the same day, and about 22,000 Mustangs were bought. 
• Black was the color of the very first Chevrolet Camaro to leave the assembly line. Additionally, the Panther was the initial name for the Camaro. 
• NASCAR forbade the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona. The vehicle, which bears the name of the Daytona 500, won its maiden race with a record-breaking speed. Unfortunately, it moved too quickly for it to last.
• The Judge, a 1969 Pontiac GTO, was given the moniker in honor of a TV program comedy. The decision to name the vehicle "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" was made at the time by John DeLorean, who was in control. 
• The so-called first rock music video also included the song "The Judge." Paul Revere and the Raiders performed a song they wrote about this car in the original TV ad for it. 
• 309 Dodge Chargers in all, all 1969 models, appeared on the first season of "Dukes of Hazzard." How can a 1969 Charger be differentiated from a 1968? On the front of the 1969 model, look for the split grille.
• In the movie "Smokey and the Bandit," one of the four 1977 Pontiac Trans Ams that were provided for the production suffered severe damage. 
• As part of their contract, each cast member of the popular TV show The Monkees received a brand-new Pontiac GTO for personal use. 
• The Dodge Charger's flip-out headlights were last used in 1973. They appeared to be unfriendly toward families, apparently.
• Chevrolet Corvettes from 1983 don't exist. Chevy instead skipped a year and unveiled a whole new model in 1984. However, all but one of the car's prototypes were destroyed. It now resides in Bowling Green, Kentucky's National Corvette Museum. 
• There are only 11 Porsche 916 prototypes in existence. It's one of the most uncommon automobiles in existence because the less priced Porsche 911 quickly replaced it. 
• The 426 HEMI engine from Chrysler was known as "the elephant" because of its enormous size and immense power. In fact, the first, second, and third-place cars at the 1964 Daytona 500 all featured this engine, which is why NASCAR eventually changed the regulations governing engines.
• A 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R Formula 1 race car set the record for the most expensive vehicle ever sold at public auction. It sold for an astounding $30 million in 2013.