Car's catalyst work at high temperatures, not at room temperature.
In fact, at room temperature they don't work at all, which is exactly the problem with catalysts, they don't work when you start your car.
They need to heat with the hot combustion gases to start working, and that takes a while.
This is one of the reasons that laboratory's measurements of particles and gases like nitrogen oxides do not apply to real emissions in cities, because most people in cities will use the cars, for example, diesels in Europe, for very short periods of time, then let the car cool down and use it again to go back less than 10 kilometers away.
There are many kinds of catalysts beyond materials surfaces. Organic chemists use metal complexes as catalysts in organic synthesis. This is especially important in asymmetric catalysis where you want to form high excesses of one isomer of a molecule, which can have drastically different effects in medicine for example. Catalysis also plays an important role in biology I believe.
In fact, at room temperature they don't work at all, which is exactly the problem with catalysts, they don't work when you start your car.
They need to heat with the hot combustion gases to start working, and that takes a while.
This is one of the reasons that laboratory's measurements of particles and gases like nitrogen oxides do not apply to real emissions in cities, because most people in cities will use the cars, for example, diesels in Europe, for very short periods of time, then let the car cool down and use it again to go back less than 10 kilometers away.