@@LGamerrWere they? At that time you had electric cars which were very practical, you pressed a button and drove away. The steam cars took something like 30 minutes to start the fire and get up to pressure. There were also many crude gasoline cars, though terrible, they were still a bit better to use than steam. Steam was relatively popular only because steam engines have been familiar to many people for nearly a century. It was completely replaced by gasoline as we learned to make more efficient engines.
@@masterkamen371they were seen as more practical as many even wealthy people didn't have electricity in the homes especially there country estates & basically all cars prior to model t were the exclusive venue of the wealthy. electrics were seen almost exclusively used as city cabs or wealthy women's city shopping cars. gas cars prior to the electric starter & muffler were difficult & even dangerous to start & scared horses who still pulled 90% of the other vehicles on the road & were only manual transmission & then as now many people didn't like driving stick. Steam was nearly silent had so much power that they were direct drive no gears to shift & unlike gasoline or electricity they could run on any widly available lamp oil remember no gass stations in the 90s to teens gass was sold at pharmacys
@@jomoma8576 You are overestimating the complexity of early car transmissions. The early Ford models had a two-speed planetary transmission (a very early automatic transmission), to get moving you pressed down the clutch, to get into second gear you pulled a lever and let go of the clutch. Earlier cars had an even simpler arrangement, chains, belts and similar were common. That aside, thinking back it does make sense how steam might have been preferred. Some rich person might have let their servant start the fire and drive them, the owner would not have to care about anything.
@@masterkamen371yes but your forgetting that the model t wouldn't have been invented till a couple of years after this car was made, but also they held 2 big advantages over combustion engines and electric cars: 1 - more torque which meant they didn't need to beef up the rear axels 2 - ease/ reliability of use during a time when the technology of the time wasn't exactly the most tried a tested for the other two, just bring some coal and a water van to refill at a local pond/river and your good to go. Charging stations and gas stations weren't exactly common during those days and if you ran out of fuel, you're screwed.
