Carl Benz received the patent for the Benz Patent-Motorwagen in 1886.
Benz applied for the patent in 1885, and German patent DRP 37435 was granted on 29 January 1886. The date is often treated as the formal birth of the modern automobile because the patent covered a practical, purpose-built motor vehicle rather than a horse-drawn carriage fitted with an engine.
The Patent-Motorwagen was a three-wheeled vehicle powered by a single-cylinder gasoline engine. Benz developed it in Mannheim, Germany, and built several versions as he refined its steering, cooling, ignition, and braking systems. It was modest by modern standards, but its design established the basic idea of a lightweight internal-combustion car.
A related milestone came in 1888, when Bertha Benz drove roughly 106 kilometres from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back in an improved Patent-Motorwagen. Her journey demonstrated that the automobile could be useful beyond the workshop. The year 1901 belongs to a later era of automobile development, not Benz’s original patent.