Why haven't Ponies invented the internal combustion engine?

[Rarity Paige Belle 1,854]

They have trains, photography, films etc so why not the car?

[Demirari 454]

Who says they don't? For all we know, they could have cars somewhere, maybe the show writers never bothered? I mean, the possibility is there, they could easily have cars, or even steam cars for all we know, and we haven't got the chance to see them. 

 

Now, what if the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 is a vehicle? It looks like it could easily go by itself, and it probably does. Unless it didn't move in that episode by itself, but I'm sure it did. And if the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy is moving by itself, then it would be considered an automobile. And if you modified it a bit, you would have a car. So if ponies don't have a car, they could easily make one if they could remake the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy.

Edited March 15, 2014 by Demirari

[PsychedelicPony 440]

Well maybe because they already have built in horsepower

 

But in all seriousness maybe they do but are so impractical or expensive in Equestria they are uncommon, except in the case of the traveling salesponies like Flim and Flam

[Geek0zoid 1,468]

Well, I'll summarize like this; imagine horses driving cars.

That'd have to be one special kind of car

[Frith is Magick 1,471]

Perhaps Equestria either lacks oil or does not have a sufficient amount to justify using it as a fuel source, thus they would opt to develop technologies to use resources which are more readily available instead of inventing internal combustion.

[Ribbonfree 2,383]

Ponies seem to be far more capable of getting around the distances humans use cars for on their own. They have trains to make especially long distances easier on themselves to travel, but considering that horse pulled carriages were used on special occasions to reach Canterlot, ponies are probably just hardier than us humans and never needed to invent personal vehicles.

[Nine 707]

Cars in Equestria would be kinda jarring don't you think? Trains get a pass because they're such old tech now that rails can work in a fantasy world. Notice that they don't have ultramodern bullet trains. They're steam engines.

So they could probably have some kind of steampunk contraption car .. and they did, as somepony else already mentioned. The Flim Flam bros. machine.

[The Coffee Pony 1,390]

Who needs cars when you have LITERAL HORSE POWER!!?   

[SasQ 1,379]

Why use cars if you have Da Magic? ;-J

 

More seriously: I regard combustion engines as part of the Dark Magic, since it predominates in our Human World, and we have lots of cars here which only make noise, car wrecks, lots of pollution (smog in the air, poisons in the soil), and massive drainage of our planet from its natural resources.

 

It's similar with electricity, which is also a part of Dark Magic the way we use it in our World. Lots of wires, dangerous voltages needed to transmit it to far distances through wires (the way electricity doesn't like to flow), and it mostly concentrates on the electric side of the electromagnetic field. Magnetism is not much used beside generators and motors. But when have you seen any magnetic circuit last time?

 

Now look at Equestria: They seem to know electricity, maybe even better than us (Pegasi can steward storm clouds and produce lightnings from them). They use some electric devices. E.g. there seem to be electric lighting turned on/off with a switch sometime. There's also a dam with a generator in "Mare Do Well" episode. But have you seen any wires? I haven't seen any single wire so far. And still, electricity is somehow transmitted from the dam into Ponyville and powers some lamps without using wires! This seems strangely similar to Nikola Tesla's greatest dream and invention: that electricity could be made to flow in the space (Ether) itself, without the need of using any wires! To do that, it needs to be combined with the other side of electrical Magic: Magnetism. When one combines electric and magnetic fields in a proper way, one can transmit electrical energy without wires. Now look closely at this power plant near the dam: it has something which looks very much like huge Tesla coils :>

 

There are some inventions which belong to Dark Magic, and I hope they will never be introduced in Equestria, because then it could damage that beautiful world as well as it damaged ours. Those are: electricity used without its Bright Magic counterpart: magnetism; combustion engines for cars; silicon-crystal (a.k.a King Sombra's dark crystal) semiconductors and digital computers (yeah, they can be useful when used properly, but that's not how we use them in our world; and they have some limitations which humanity still needs to understand); gun powder and warfare machines (have you noticed already that Dark Magic is all about explosion instead of implosion?); atomic energy & atomic bombs; radioactivity.

Edited March 15, 2014 by SasQ

[Untitled Goose Q 5,137]

Why should they have invented it? They don't need it, after all.

[GenderIsAnIllusion 2,177]

What need do they have for cars?...... They don't exactly have too many car accessible streets in most cities we've seen (outside of manehatten....) plus , Each pony has more efficient, and reliable transportation methods than car.