ABSTRACT
Over a century ago in Mannheim, Karl Benz installed a combustion engine to his infamous tricycle, which is widely accepted as the šrst automobile. Whether that (see Figure 10.1) was truly the case or not will always remain open to argument; what however can hardly be denied is the rapid development of the automobile to the ubiquitous transport mode and instrument for recreation it is today. In highly motorized countries such as the US, Japan and in Europe, it is difšcult to imagine life without road vehicles. In other developed countries, more often than not, a car is the most desirable purchase in a person’s life, to the point of sometimes competing with the purchase of a house.
