Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (26 February 1725 – 2 October 1804) is a French inventor.

He is believed to have built the first self-propelled mechanical vehicle.

This claim is disputed by some sources, however, which suggest that Ferdinand Verbiest, as a member of a Jesuit mission in China, may have been the first to build, around 1672, a steam-powered vehicle but was too small to carry passenger.