[alephnil]

Electric vehicles are far more efficient than ordinary cars, over 80% including both the charging/uncharging of the batteries and the electric motor. Compare that with the 25% of ordinary cars. Even if all the electricity comes from coal, it is no worse than ordinary cars, since coal fired power plants also are more efficient than gas engines. That means that it is no worse than ordinary cars even in the worst case.

You can argue that to get more people to use public trasport is a bigger win, but to say electric vehicles is a fraud is just wrong.

[Nrsolis]

The top end Model S has a 85kWh battery pack and can get 265 miles on that charge according to the 5-point standard for MPGe set by the EPA. That's equivalent to just under 3 gallons of gas using the GGE conversion mechanism.

That's an amazing efficiency win.

So far, the biggest downside is the extended charge time. To fully recharge the car using the fastest charger, it's about 4-5 hours.