actually the first car or one of them was i the 1880s sultan of turkey has an electric car that had a range of a few miles and could go a couple miles per hour

And actually the first recorded car was from 1879 but see, they DID have STEEM cars before that that were more like land trains or tractors

The inventor of the Steam Tractor is Thomas Aveling, he invented his first Steam Traction Engine in 1858. He invented it so people could pull stuff a lot faster, with less work. Thomas Newcomen and James Watt created the steam engine which obviously runs the tractor.

But about having a horse in the front, that is how many luxury car makers got their start, like mercedes benz started out as building luxury Horse drawn carriages and then converted to motors when those became more affordable