Transportation: A Doctored Stanley, We Presume?

The International Automobile Show, it is called, but it might also be known as the International Smog Machine Show. It is well known, of course, that the gasoline-powered car is the major polluter of U.S. air—a problem for which neither Washington nor Detroit has yet managed to find a solid solution. Short of reverting to the horse and buggy, the obvious answer is to develop a new propulsion system for automobiles that is as efficient as but less noxious than the internal-combustion engine. When the annual auto show opened in Manhattan last...