What counts as the first automobile: the Benz Patent Motorwagen, or an earlier self propelled road vehicle?

The Benz Patent Motorwagen is the vehicle most widely credited as the first true automobile because it was patented in 1886 and was designed from first principles around its own internal combustion engine rather than adapted from a horse drawn carriage. But self propelled road vehicles predate it by over a century: Nicolas Joseph Cugnots steam powered fardier a vapeur of 1769 is often cited as the first self propelled road vehicle, and various steam carriages operated in Britain in the early nineteenth century. The dispute is less about facts than definition: what counts as an automobile rather than merely a self propelled vehicle.