Mobility’s second great inflection is about much more than cars

When 1908 dawned, there were fewer than 150,000 registered passenger cars on American roads. By the end of 1920, there were well over 8 million.

What happened in that dozen or so years? The Model T, for starter, which went into production in October 1908. But the dynamics went much farther than just the number of units sold, and farther too than the success stories of Alfred Sloan and General Motors and the Dodge Brothers and the automakers who followed. The automobile changed America. Then it changed the world.