Vehicle

Buses are a popular form of vehicles used for public transport

Automobiles are among the most commonly used engine-powered vehicles

A vehicle (Latin: vehiculum) is a device that is designed or used to transport people or cargo. Most often vehicles are manufactured (e.g. bicycles, cars, motorcycles, trains, ships, boats, and aircraft).^[1]

Vehicles that do not travel on land often are called craft, such as watercraft, sailcraft, aircraft, hovercraft, and spacecraft

Land vehicles are classified broadly by what is used to apply steering and drive forces against the ground: wheeled, tracked, railed, or skied.

Legal definitions

As part of laws regulating road traffic most jurisdictions define what is and is not a vehicle for legal purposes. For instance the Canadian province of Ontario is fairly typical in defining:^[2]

"vehicle" includes a motor vehicle, trailer, traction engine, farm tractor, road-building machine, bicycle and any vehicle drawn, propelled or driven by any kind of power, including muscular power, but does not include a motorized snow vehicle or a street car^[2]

History of vehicles

• The oldest boats to be found by archaeological excavation are logboats from around 7,000-9,000 years ago,^[3][4][5][6]
• a 7,000 year-old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in Kuwait.^[7]
• Boats were used between 4000BCE-3000BCE in Sumer,^[8] ancient Egypt^[9] and in the Indian Ocean.^[8]
• There is evidence of camel pulled wheeled vehicles about 3000-4000 BCE.^[10]
• The earliest evidence of a wagonway, a predecessor of the railway, found so far was the 6 to 8.5 km long Diolkos wagonway, which transported boats across the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece since around 600 BC.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} Wheeled vehicles pulled by men and animals ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element, preventing the wagons from leaving the intended route.^[15]

• Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a stained-glass window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau dating from around 1350.^[16]

• In 1515, Cardinal Matthäus Lang wrote a description of the Reisszug, a funicular railway at the Hohensalzburg Castle in Austria. The line originally used wooden rails and a hemp haulage rope, and was operated by human or animal power, through a treadwheel.^[17][18]

• 1769 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot is often credited with building the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle or automobile in about 1769, by adapting an existing horse-drawn vehicle, this claim is disputed by some, who doubt Cugnot's three-wheeler ever ran or was stable.

• In Russia, in the 1780s, Ivan Kulibin developed a human-pedalled, three-wheeled carriage with modern features such as a flywheel, brake, gear box, and bearings; however, it was not developed further.^[19]

• 1783 Montgolfier brothers first Balloon vehicle

• 1801 Richard Trevithick built and demonstrated his Puffing Devil road locomotive, believed by many to be the first demonstration of a steam-powered road vehicle, although it was unable to maintain sufficient steam pressure for long periods, and would have been of little practical use.

• 1817 push bikes draisines, or hobby horses were the first human means of transport to make use of the two-wheeler principle, the draisine (or Laufmaschine, "running machine"), invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais, is regarded as the forerunner of the modern bicycle (and motorcycle). It was introduced by Drais to the public in Mannheim in summer 1817.^[20]

• 1885 Otto Lilienthal began experimental gliding, and achieved the first sustained, controlled, reproducible flights.

• 1903 Wright brothers flew the first controlled, powered aircraft

• 1907 First helicopters Gyroplane no.1 (tethered) and Cornu helicopter (free flight)^[21]

• 1928 Opel RAK.1 rocket car

• 1929 Opel RAK.1 rocket glider

• 1961 Vostok vehicle carried first man (Yuri Gagarin) into space

• 1969 Apollo Program first manned vehicle lands on the moon

Power source

Vehicles may be powered by fuels, such as petroleum or diesel, nuclear power, wind, waves, batteries, electrical power, solar energy, gravity, human or animal power and other chemical reactions and physical sources of energy have seen some use.

Motors

The power is converted into some kind of motion by a "motor". Engines commonly include steam engines, internal combustion engines (including jet engines and gas turbines) or electric motors. Muscles perform this function in animals. Other schemes are sometimes used.

Movement

Vehicles use different means to permit or ease movement. These are commonly in the form of wheels, boat or submarine hulls, skis, caterpillar tracks, skates, wings, rotors or cushions of air or jets of air. Lighter than air lifting and rocket power have also been used. Trains use tracks, either with wheels resting on them, or in a few cases using magnetic levitation. Cable cars are suspended from cables which move. Legs are used on experimental mechanical systems.

One of the studies of vehicle movement is vehicle dynamics. In terms of dynamics, some vehicles such as bicycles and motorcycles leave essentially a single track and are unstable at rest.

Steering

Steering is the term applied to the collection of components, linkages, etc. which will allow for a vessel (ship, boat) or vehicle (car, motorcycle) to follow the desired course. An exception is the case of rail transport by which rail tracks combined together with railroad switches (and also known as 'points' in British English) provide the steering function.

Part of car steering mechanism: tie rod, steering arm, king pin axis (using ball joints).

Propulsion

Propulsion is achieved in different ways. It can be achieved by an animal's legs that pulls a vehicle or by wheels that provide torque, by jet propulsion, a propeller or sometimes linear electric motors. Cables can also be attached to a vehicle, as in some funiculars. Wind powered vehicles such as yachts are nearly always directly propelled by the wind, but some unusual forms use the power of the wind to turn wheels.

Some gravity powered vehicles such as glider aircraft, street luge and soapbox cars have no in-built propulsion system.

Friction

All vehicles, with the exception of some space vehicles, experience significant frictional drag, typically mainly air or water drag and rolling resistance. Via this friction the work generated by the vehicle's propulsion system is ultimately turned to waste heat. Friction also occurs in many braking systems, although some braking systems are regenerative which permits recovery of some of the energy from the vehicle's motion.

Energy

The friction generated by the vehicle acting over the distance it travels very typically determines the energy needed to be expended.

For a vehicle that is travelling at constant speed, from the definition of mechanical energy to move a given distance the energy needed is simply:

where E is the energy, F is the friction force and s is the distance.

This determines the minimum amount of energy the power source must provide and usually determines the vehicle's range.

Vehicle metrics

There are a broad range of metrics that denote the relative capabilities of various vehicles. Most of them apply to all vehicles while others are type-specific.

Types of vehicles

Pousse-pousse in Madagascar

A pedal-powered quadracycle parked on a Canadian urban street amongst the cars

A teenage girl holding a skateboard.

Air

• Aircraft
• Ground effect vehicle

Land

Space

• Launch escape capsule
• Rocket
• Spacecraft

Water

• Amphibious vehicle
• Amphibious ATV
• Boat
• Diving bell
• Diving chamber
• Hovercraft
• Ship
• Submarine
• Submersible

• More types of vehicles...

Legislation

Motor vehicle and trailer categories are defined according to the following international classification:^[22]

• Category M: passenger vehicles.
• Category N: motor vehicles for the carriage of goods.
• Category O: trailers and semi-trailers.

European Union

In the European Union the classifications for vehicle types are defined by ^[23]:

• Commission Directive 2001/116/EC of 20 December 2001, adapting to technical progress Council Directive 70/156/EEC on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the type-approval of motor vehicles and their trailers^[24]
• Directive 2002/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 March 2002 relating to the type-approval of two or three-wheeled motor vehicles and repealing Council Directive 92/61/EEC

European Community, is based on the Community's WVTA (whole vehicle type-approval) system. Under this system, manufacturers can obtain certification for a vehicle type in one Member State if it meets the EC technical requirements and then market it EU-wide with no need for further tests. Total technical harmonization already has been achieved in three vehicle categories (passenger cars, motorcycles, and tractors) and soon will be extended to other vehicle categories (coaches and utility vehicles). It is essential that European car manufacturers be ensured access to as large a market as possible.

While the Community type-approval system allows manufacturers to benefit fully from the opportunities offered by the internal market, worldwide technical harmonization in the context of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) offers them a market which extends beyond European borders.

Acronyms and abbreviations

See also

The Trikke is a human-powered vehicle (HPV)

References

External links

• Green Vehicle Guide
• Strangest Vehicles In The World
• Council Directive 70/156/EEC, about Type-approval of motor vehicles and their trailers.
• Council Directive 80/1267/EEC: Amendment of Directive 70/156/EEC
• Council Directive 80/1268/EEC Fuel consumption of motor vehicles.
• EU Motor Vehicle Type Approval.
• List of all motor vehicles produced in US, Mexico, & Canada