[Captain Awesome]

Basically when you break down the numbers electric power generation is about 75% efficent. Transmission is about 95% efficient. Battery charge is about 80% efficient. Discharge is about 90% efficient.

Internal combustion engines are about 18% efficient.

If you do the math, you see that it's almost exactly a wash. You lose 82% of your energy in a combusion engine and lose 82% of your energy in an electric car.

Drilling and refining costs energy but mining coal and transporting it also costs money, etc.

What it boils down to is that most of the losses in these processes are losses caused by some portion of the energy being converted to heat.

However, in the gasoline powered car the heat is lost locally and can be captured and put to use in the climate control system. In the electric car the heat is lost in generation, transmittion, and storage of the energy. Only a miniscule fraction is lost in the use of the car and that is difficult to capture and reuse.

In other words, the majority of drivers use heat at some point, and since it is free with the internal combustion engine vehicle, they are actually saving energy due to the more efficient recycling of waste heat in an otherwise fairly equal system with the electric car.