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The vehicle carried a front mounted boiler and a two-cylinder engine located over the front wheel. Cugnot's vehicle worked but needed to stop every 10 - 12
minutes to rebuild enough steam pressure to continue. The vehicle had a top speed of 2mph and eventually caused the world's first automobile accident when it ran out of control and demolished a garden wall.
Cugnot's Steam Dray was designed initially as a "gun carriage" to transport large pieces of artillery and was tested to carry large loads.
In July 1771, Cugnot had built a second vehicle ready for testing. Cugnot had been encouraged in his work by the General Gribeauval and the Duke of Choiseul, who were placed very well at the Court of Louis XV. Gribeauval then wrote to the Marquis de Monteynard, the Minister for the War asking him to close the Avenue of Versailles so that Cugnot's vehicle could be tested in secrecy and on uneven land. These tests did not take place as the letter was never answered. It is thought the vehicle was used in the grounds of the Arsenal where it had been built. It survived the Revolution and today is in the National Academy of Arts and Métiers, France where it has been since 1800.
Louis XV gave Cugnot an annual pension of 600 francs which ceased after 1789. Cugnot became poor and was exiled to Brussels and was again pensioned by Napoleon
little before his death in 1804. Napoleon was not interested in steam powered gun vehicles and so gave it little thought. In the following thirty years no inventors worked in France and Steam Power was developed further
in the UK by names like William Murdock, James Watt and Richard Trevithick.
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