I'm honestly not sure the assumptions underlying your comment. Solar cell to battery is pretty inefficient at the moment with the best solar cells converting 26% of the solar energy hitting the cell into electricity and the charge-discharge efficiency of li ion cells is 80-90%. The ultimate amount of energy delivered is less than 30%.
Regardless, if any of the biological/algal methods of CO2 to fuel techniques become successful, why would we care if 5%, 50%, 100% of the solar energy received makes its way to the end product. It's basically free energy at that point. The only thing that would matter is real estate to house the facilities.
Round-trip electricity efficiency is what I was referring to, assuming you'd use electricity. If you have to synthesize fuel using electricity and then burn it to produce either movement (shaft-power) or electricity, the efficiency is on the order of 10%. Whereas for batteries, the efficiency is on the order of 80-90%.
Any likely method of CO2 to petroleum is likely to be below 50%, more like 15-30% efficient. Round-trip efficiency an entire order of magnitude worse than battery. That's why batteries are better for ground-based applications and will remain so.