With its sprawling sometimes tangled array of parts suppliers assembly plants logistics networks and dealers the auto industry is perhaps uniquely vulnerable to disasters natural and otherwise.
Manufacturers are all too familiar with interruptions to production from floods blizzards land slides and forest fires. Dealers have seen their new car inventories wiped out by overflowing rivers surging tides and punishing hail storms.
Catastrophes happen even at sea. A Norwegian carrier with 2862 cars aboard sank in the English Channel in 2002 after colliding with a container ship in thick fog.
But there has been nothing like the triple threat in Japan wrought by last week's earthquake and tidal wave combined with growing worries of a nuclear reactor meltdown.
As the world's third-largest producer of automobiles (after China and the U.S.) Japan's manufacturing network is highly developed and unusually complex. The natural constraints of Japan's crowded highways and seaports combined with man-made complications like just-in-time parts delivery have led to the creation a finely-tuned delicately-balanced system.
Running smoothly it is highly productive. But a single disruption anywhere along the line can tie up the whole system. Assembling a car requires some 10000 individual pieces and every single one of them is needed in the finished product.
The automobile has a long history. The French engineer Nicolas Joseph Cugnot built the first self-propelled vehicle (Paris 1789) a heavy three-wheeled steam-driven carriage with a boiler that projected in front; its speed was c.3 mph (5 kph). In 1801 the British engineer Richard Trevithick also built a three-wheeled steam-driven car; the engine drove the rear wheels. Development of the automobile was retarded for decades by over-regulation: speed was limited to 4 mph (6.4 kph) and until 1896 a person was required to walk in front of a self-propelled vehicle carrying a red flag by day and a red lantern by night. The Stanley brothers of Massachusetts the most well-known American manufacturers of steam-driven autos produced their Stanley Steamers from 1897 until after World War I.
The development of the automobile was accelerated by the introduction of the internal-combustion engine. Probably the first vehicle of this type was the three-wheeled car built in 1885 by the engineer Karl Benz in Germany. Another German engineer Gottlieb Daimler built an improved internal-combustion engine c.1885. The Panhard car introduced in France by the Daimler company in 1894 had many features of the modern car. In the United States internal-combustion cars of the horseless buggy type were manufactured in the 1890s by Charles Duryea and J. Frank Duryea Elwood Haynes Henry Ford Ransom E. Olds and Alexander Winton. Many of the early engines had only one cylinder with a chain-and-sprocket drive on wooden carriage wheels. The cars generally were open accommodated two passengers and were steered by a lever.
The free growth of the automobile industry in the early 20th cent. was threatened by the American inventor George Selden's patent issued in 1895. Several early manufacturers licensed by Selden formed an association in 1903 and took over the patent in 1907. Henry Ford the leader of a group of independent manufacturers who refused to acknowledge the patent was engaged in litigation with Selden and the association from 1903 until 1911 when the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the patent although valid covered only the two-cycle engine; most cars including Ford's used a four-cycle engine. The mass production of automobiles that followed and the later creation of highways linking cities to suburbs and region to region transformed American landscape and society.
汽车有着悠久的历史。法国工程师Nicolas Joseph Cugnot建造第一个自行车(巴黎,1789),一个重,三轮驱动,蒸汽锅炉,预计在车厢前部;速度3英里(5公里)。在1801英国工程师理查·特里维西克也建立了一三轮,蒸汽驱动的汽车;发动机驱动后轮。汽车的发展是落后几十年的过度监管:速度限制在4英里每小时(6.4公里/小时),直到1896人被要求走在自行车的前面,扛着一面红旗日夜红灯笼。斯坦利兄弟马萨诸塞州,蒸汽驱动的汽车最知名的美国制造商,从1897直到第一次世界大战后产生的斯坦利轮船
汽车的发展是由内燃机的引入加速。也许这种类型的第一辆车是由工程师卡尔奔驰在德国建造的三轮车在1885。另一位德国工程师戈特利布戴姆勒,建立改进的内燃机c.1885。安车,介绍了在法国的戴姆勒公司1894,有现代汽车的许多特征。在美国,不用马拉的马车型内燃机车的是Charles Duryea和J. Frank Duryea,Elwood Haynes,Henry Ford,制造,兰塞姆·奥兹和亚历山大·温顿。许多早期的发动机只有一个汽缸,链条和链轮驱动在木制的车轮上.。汽车通常是开放的,容纳两名乘客,并由杠杆操纵。
A kind of little car may someday take the place of today's big ones. If people drive such cars in the future there will be less pollution in the air.
There will be more space for parking in cities. The streets will be less crowded. And driving will be safer as these little cars can go only 65 km per hour.
The future cars will be fine for getting round a city but they will not be useful for long trips.
Little cars will go 200km before needing to stop for more gas. If big cars are still used along with the small ones two sets of roads will be needed in the future. roads will be used for the big fast cars and other roads will be needed for the slow and small ones.
It's said that three such little cars fit in the space now needed for one car the usual size.有一种小汽车也许有一天能取代今天的大轿车。如果人们将来驾驶这样的汽车,空气中的污染就会减少.。
With the development of modern industry,more and more families are able to have their own cars.But,seeing the problems like air pollution and the reduction of resources,some people appeal for the reduction of private cars.Still,I think there is every reason for the even faster development of the car industry.
Thanks to the development of the car industry, we do not have to cram in the buses, but can enjoy in our free travel.With our own cars, we can go to more places in a leisure way. Transportation becomes comfortable and easy.
But there are those who worry that too many cars may cause more traffic problems, serious:air pollution and the exhaustion ofresources, While these problems may be true, they can be solved and some are being solved.
For example, we can invent cars that can save fuel or use other types of energy so that cars can still be used even though resources run short. To reduce pollution, people have manufactured many cars without pollution. We can relieve the traffic pressure by building more and more roads or-adopt computer-monitored automated highways.
For all the contemporary problems cars bring, no one can deny the convenience cars bring us and ignore the effort that we make to solve these problems. Therefore,the development of the car industry is necessary, and it should develop as quickly as possible.
Automobile structure and power transmissionCar generally engine, chassis, body and electrical equipment such as the four basic components.Automobile engine is the power device, composed of 2 agencies the Department of 5 components: a crank connecting rod mechanism, a gas distribution mechanism, cooling system, lubricating system, fuel supply system, ignition system, starting system of diesel engine, but less than a gasoline engine ignition system。1 cooling system: general by the water tanks, water pump, radiator, fan, thermostat, temperature table and a water discharge switch.Uses two types of automobile engine cooling method, air cooling and water cooling.Use of general automotive engine cooling water.2 lubrication line: by the engine lubrication oil pump, a filter, oil filter, oil, pressure limiting valve, the oil gauge, pressure sensor plug and dipstick.