The Chemistry of Smog

choi

Daniel Yergin, Back to an Electric Future for Cars: A Caltech scientist turned the key in 1948, and innovation is getting into gear. Now we're on the road from smog to ZEVs. Los Angeles Times, Dec 11, 2011 (op-ed).
http://www.latimes.com/news/opin ... ergin-smog-20111211,0,7885133.story

Quote:

"In 1900, more battery-powered electric cars ran on the streets of New York City than cars with internal combustion engines, and over the next few years there was a fierce race for supremacy between them. But the arrival in 1908 of Henry Ford's Model T turned the gasoline-powered car into an affordable mass-market product and made the electric car a historical curiosity.

"The source [of smog] was primarily the emissions from the incomplete burning of gasoline in internal combustion engines, plus emissions from gas storage tanks and auto gas tanks.

"The [2006] documentary 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' names the automakers themselves as the main villain, but the real obstacle was the technology, or lack thereof. 'The true villain was the battery,' said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis and a current member of air resources board. 'The batteries at the time [1990s] were simply not capable of meeting the cost requirements and the performance expectations.'  * * * new lithium battery technologies appeared, with more energy density and greater range than traditional lead-acid batteries.

Note: Regarding Arie Haagen-Smit.
(a) Häagen-Dazs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4agen-Dazs
(a brand of ice cream, established by Jewish-Polish immigrants Reuben and Rose Mattus in the Bronx, New York, in 1961; sections 2 and 3 Name; Business history)
(b) Haagen is a Danish, Norwegian surname. In that case, I do not know if there is a diacritical mark ¨ on top of either a.