1900's Electric Car

Today the electric car is viewed as a new development...
...when in actuality it's been around for as long as the gas car.

Above is a picture of Thomas Edison and an electric car in 1913.
And here is a 1904 Columbia Electric Runabout, the best-seller car in the U.S. in 1900 and the first to exceed 1000 sales.
So what happened to the electric car?
 If the Electric Vehicles have been around for over 100 years, why are our cities covered in a thick smog of the excrement of combustion based vehicles?