The internal combustion engine in a car is around 20% efficiency while a coal power plant is around 55%. Gasoline powered drivetrains are also fairly inefficient leading to around 16% "tank to wheel" efficiency. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. An electric car is making more efficient use of the energy. It's also centralizing the source of the pollution rather than having to try to deal with it in every car on the road.

The idea that electric vehicles are "dirty" because of electricity produced from coal is now widely viewed as a myth [1]. The electric grid in the US (and worldwide [3]) is consistently and rapidly moving away from coal, which increases the "clean" factor of EVs over time [2].

[1] https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/evs-n...

[2] https://electrek.co/2017/06/05/electric-cars-cleaner-than-ga...

[3] https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/16/coal-use-china-india-li...

A coal power plant can reach up to ~60% if coupled with steam turbines, otherwise it's ~30%.

Petrol cars can do a lot better than 20%

There is a study, link below, showing what the subsidy should be for electric cars and in a lot of places in the US the subsidy should be negative.

Granted things might've changed since then, but probably not to overturn the gist of it, which is the point I'm making. In places, EV cars are not the solution.

Quite happy to be proven wrong, at the of the day I've only got a passing interest on the topic so I'm not exactly 100% up to speed with any new studies, etc ...

https://www.citylab.com/environment/2015/06/where-electric-v...

City Lab has debunked that notion twice [1, 2].

"[I]t’s important to realize that the situation reflected in this data represents the past, not the present. States across the country are rapidly cleaning up their grids, thanks to cap-and-trade programs, investments in renewable energy, tightened air quality standards, and more coal plants put to sleep." [2]

"Here’s the cool thing about electric vehicles in the U.S. right now: In many areas, the longer you own one, the cleaner it gets." [1]

[1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2017/06/electric-vehicles-are-c...

[2] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/12/the-surprisin...

If Tesla was actively working to prop up our fossil fuel based electricity grid, than I think this would be a fair argument. But they are not. Instead they are actively engaged in the solar+storage market, and they have stated multiple times that they believe the grid can be 100% renewable.

In the short term, yes, folks will need to rely on existing fossil fuel technologies to build factories, transport materials, and power the grid. That is because there is no other economically viable option. To expect the entire clean energy industry to bootstrap itself only using clean energy is a fallacy. In 20-30 years when the grid is more green and clean transportation is widely available, then arguments like these would be valid.

I'm just pointing out that both effects are, at this point in time, just rounding errors