For many teenagers in North America, the sixteenth birthday is an important day. It's the day they can start learning to drive. Learning to drive is difficult and takes a lot of time. It's important that you become a safe driver.
Cars have lots of parts that work together to move. First, you have the pedals. One is to speed up, and the other is to slow down. To speed up, we push harder on a pedal named the accelerator, or the gas pedal. It tells the engine to work harder. When we want to slow down, we push the brakes. This stops the wheels from turning.
To turn, you have the steering wheel. A car without a steering wheel isn't much use. To get people's attention, we use the horn. It makes a very loud noise and tells people that you are there!
Just like bicycles, cars have different gears. Some cars change gears automatically, and some must be changed manually. When you are moving slowly, you use a lower gear. When you are moving quickly, you use a higher gear.
Last but not least, we have the seat belts. It's important to buckle up every time we get in the car. Or as my grandparents used to say, "Clunk click every trip."
Cars have been around for more than a hundred years. In that time, they have changed a lot. In 1886 in Germany, the first car was made. It had three wheels and no cover. It had three wheels to make steering easier.
In 1908, Ford created the first car that people could actually buy. The Model T was just $850. To make sure people bought them, Henry Ford, the owner of the company, doubled his staff's wages one day. This meant that his workers could afford to buy the car. Because they made more money, demand for cars increased. At one point in time, most Americans owned the Ford Model T.
Since then, more and more people around the world own cars. In fact, by 2010, there were over 1 billion cars in the world.
Most cars today use gas. Gas is expensive and dirty. Could the future of cars be electric? Electric cars are fast, and they don't use any gas.
Some companies are creating cars that don't need a driver. The car does the steering itself. Tesla hopes to have 1,000,000 driverless taxis on the road by 2021. Some say they will be safer than humans. Others worry that they will be more dangerous. What do you think the cars of the future will look like?