Not OP but he’s correct if talking about how much energy actually moves the car —- IC engines are indeed ~40% efficient but if you’re measuring the energy that actually moves the car it’s more like 23%-25% due to all the parasitic and drivetrain losses. So it’s completely plausible for a power plant to be 3x that.

Of course some of those losses would also apply to EVs but still, “wasting” 3/4 the energy of a highly refined, carbon intensive product is a pretty low bar.

Page 53 onward: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/5764...