History of the Increasing Number of Motor Cars / Automobiles

1.1 The Increasing Number of Cars

• At the start of the twentieth century there were only about 8,000 cars in the United States and possibly not more than 25,000 worldwide.

• Most cars in the early 1900s were located in either the United States or Europe. In 1908, for example, there were only about 20 cars in Tokyo, Japan.

• There were 300 cars in the United States in 1895, 78,000 in 1905, 459,00 in 1910 and 1.7 million in 1914.
  
  

• In 1903 just under 63,000 cars were built in the world of which about half were produced in France.
  
  

• By 1910 there were 100,000 cars in Great Britain.
  

• By 1968 the worldwide figure had increased to 170 million; a figure that had more than doubled to 375 million by 1985.

• In 2002 there were 530 million cars worldwide, of which about 25% (130 million) were in the United States.