Burning coal to make electricity, then transmitting that electricity all over the country, wasting some of it along the way... Then using that to charge a battery, then using that to power a motor.
I'm not sure it sounds particularly efficient unless you completely ignore all the work that goes into making the electricity :/
It's more efficient than blowing it up in your engine.
ICE engines are ~15% efficient at converting energy to movement. You must also include the cost of transporting, refining and drilling for the oil (coal is cheaper to get). This should push it down to ~10% burn to road.
Main stream coal power plants are ~30-39% efficient, electric transmission lines are ~95% efficient, battery charging is ~88% efficient and electric engines are ~92% efficient. That's burn to road of ~20-30%. Even without taking into account the extra costs of doing stuff with the oil to put it into your car, and having that priced with electric - electric is still better. There's a reason we electrified our trains, and a reason that diesel trains actually use their diesel engines to run electric motors.
We're also ignoring the cost of pollution that ICE vehicles bring (it's a lot more than power plants - which because they are centralized, can economically mitigate the release of pollution). If you price that into ICE, they lose pretty badly - because pollution is not, and never should have been free.
It's a resource you use and abuse to the detriment of everyone else.
Fundamentally you must understand this and this only:
Electric vehicles are 2x as efficient as ICE vehicles and cost less on a total cost of ownership basis.
They have won so badly that only willful ignorance can stop one from avoiding such an obvious conclusion (Innovator's dilemma).
This also presumes that you have access to a reliable power grid which is not the case in places like central and subcontinental Asia, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster like Superstorm Sandy.
(despite that i totally think we should go electric. just that we should figure out ways to setup better infrastructure and disaster mitigation)
If you're on the moon, combustion based engines wouldn't work, so there is that... A freak natural disaster isn't a great reason to stay away owning an electric car. Of course there are going to be places around the world where the adoption of EVs isn't a good idea, but there are places where owning a boat is more useful than owning a car. It's about the needs of the consumer and the ability of local infrastructure to support it.
You don't have access to cheap/easy oil in those disaster situations either.
Furthermore subcontinental Asia is driving the adoption of tiny electric vehicles - China has over 130 million electric scooters (and that's from a few years ago - the numbers are going insane).
However, that's where hybrids shine - the slightly increased complexity of my Prius still makes it 2x as gas-efficient as a non-hybrid gas car.
I remeber a slashdot post a few years ago about a Prius onwer who mentioned how the evacuation of Houston during Hurricane Rita was an absolute nightmare for most car owners - the roads were packed and everyone was doing 1-2mph for 8+ hours. Many SUVs were simply abandoned on the side of the road. He ended up getting 55mpg for the week.
If I didn't own a hybrid already, a Volt would be an awesome car to get - can be electric for it's full range, but like modern diesel trains - it simply uses the gas engine as a powerplant to run it's electric motor.
Burning coal / electricity / oil to explore, drill, transport, refine, and re-transport oil ... Then using that to fill your car, so you can blow it up inside an engine.
Sounds a little less efficient than the electricity thing when you look at the full sequence. And this is even in the case where electricity comes from dirty sources; some states, like California, have an energy mix where electricity comes mostly from renewables. (And this is something that can be improved as time goes on).
Difference is though, with an internal combustion engine, the "turning fuel into power" happens inside the car.
Whereas with electric cars, it happens at a power plant... then gets sent to the car via electricity, with lots of it wasted along the way.
Personally, I don't see electric cars as solving anything. We should be looking at generating the power in the car, from things that are plentiful - water, dirt, garbage, sewage etc.
No, Gasoline is highly refined compared to oil. Diesel isn't as much. So "Turning fuel into energy" is really "Turning Oil into Fuel using chemicals and energy which in turn can be turned into energy" You still need a refinery and a very large distribution network consisting or trains, trucks, and pipelines. Your assumption of transmission energy loss is silly when you compare the required energy of transporting things like oil and water around.
If cars were really as efficient as you seem to think, then we should be replacing all of our coal burning power plants with massive stacks of car engines.
My understanding is that power loss through transmission averages at 6-7% for electricity (don't know if the Wikipedia article includes all losses happening: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission#Los...), which is really not that bad. I am not an engineer, but converting oil to gasoline/diesel, distributing it and burning it at an inefficient RPM in a car might be just as bad or worse.
Here in Seattle, we don't burn coal. Ok I lied, 0.52% of our energy does actually come from coal. But 96% of it is hydro and wind: http://www.seattle.gov/light/fuelmix/
That's a fuel mix to be very proud of. Unfortunately even here, most people in the metro area live outside Seattle city limits, and right across Lake Washington in the burbs the fuel mix is 32% coal, 16% natural gas http://pse.com/aboutpse/EnergySupply/Pages/Electric-Supply.a...
yes, that's one of the things people forget about battery power - it decouples the generation of the energy from the storage. This means that you can switch from burning coal to solar, hydro or wind as an energy source with no changes at all to the car
It's actually quite a bit more efficient than an internal combustion engine, even with power line and battery losses. That's why EVs have the advantage in per-mile fuel costs. Power plants are quite a bit more efficient than the engine in your car. I don't have the numbers on hand but it's something like 40% vs 25%.
I'm not sure it sounds particularly efficient unless you completely ignore all the work that goes into making the electricity :/