>>945627
This. Let's break down the efficiency of an electric car.
An electric motor is 94% efficient.
The process of charging a battery is about 80% efficient.
The process of discharging a battery is about 80% efficient.
The DC power in the battery needs to be converted into AC for the motors, probably with something like a variable frequency drive. That device would be about 95% efficient.
There will be some losses in the copper wiring because manufacturers can't afford to use 0000 AWG wiring everywhere. This figure would be difficult to estimate without studying a wiring diagram so I'll exclude it from the estimate.
The power distribution grid is probably somewhere around 90% efficient, but often less depending on the grid's quality and each person's distance from the source.
The power plant itself isn't particularly efficient, either. This is also difficult to estimate due to the differences between the various types of power plants, but 50% efficiency is probably a reasonable estimate.
If we do the math, this means an electric car is optimistically about 26% efficient. The estimates for the efficiency of a gasoline engine are usually in the range of 20% to 40%, depending on who you ask. Diesel engines are slightly more efficient; I see claims that peak diesel engine efficiency is usually about 45%. To be fair, we should subtract the typical 15-20% drivetrain losses from these figures, so we can assume a gasoline car as a whole is somewhere between 17-34% efficient and a diesel around 38% efficient at peak. In the end, there isn't a significant difference between ICE and electric car efficiency in practice, but the data also suggests that a well-engineered internal combustion engine has the potential to be more efficient than an electric car could ever be.
Except this still isn't a fair comparison. We haven't considered the weights of these vehicles. The batteries in electric cars are ridiculously heavy: a Tesla Model S weighs about the same as a Cadillac Eldorado from the 1970s, and a Model X would be comparable to the even heavier Lincoln Continentals of similar vintage. Most non-electric non-hybrid economy cars weigh about half of those values. In other words, a Tesla would require twice as much energy to move down the road as a typical econobox, effectively cutting its efficiency numbers in half.
If we then consider the environmental impact of creating and disposing of the monstrous Lithium batteries they use about once per car per decade, there's absolutely no way that an electric car is more environmentally responsible than a car with an ICE, which is usually what people mean when they mention engine efficiency. Drilling for oil doesn't require completely destroying a landscape with a strip mining operation, and creating and disposing of an iron or aluminum engine block that should easily last 20+ years is an easy process.
Electric cars are impressive pieces of equipment in a lot of ways, but anybody trying to claim that they're more efficient than a traditional ICE car is lying through their teeth.