The lost history of a nearly successful push to ban gas-powered cars in the 1960s

Half a century ago, an obscure California state senator fought to ban gas-powered cars—and almost won.

Nicholas Petris, born to Greek immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1923, could remember a time when electric trucks were a common sight on the streets of Oakland. In fact, just a couple of decades before his birth, both electric and steam-powered vehicles—which were cleaner and more powerful, respectively, than early gas-powered cars—constituted far larger shares of the American car market than combustion vehicles.