A wheeled vehicle powered by an engine that is used to transport people. Typically it has four wheels with tyres, runs primarily on roads, has an internal-combustion or electric engine, or a combination of these (a hybrid), although many early versions were stream-driven, and is equipped with controls and instruments to permit its safe operation. The first working automobile was steam-powered and built in about 1770 by the French inventor Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, and the first vehicle with an internal-combustion engine was built in 1807 by the Swiss inventor François Isaac de Rivaz, but neither was very successful. In 1879 the German engineer Karl Benz received a patent for an internal-combustion engine that powered his Patent-Motorwagen, built in 1885, a three-wheeled vehicle that was the first successful automobile.