> which is ~27% of the energy required to run a normal car! This is because you're not comparing the same things: going from thermal energy to mechanical energ

> which is ~27% of the energy required to run a normal car! This is because you're not comparing the same things: going from thermal energy to mechanical energy has a much lower efficiency than going from electricity to mechanical energy. But that electricity has to come from somewhere, and most of the losses happen at the electricity generation place instead of in the car. > It just wouldn't have been possible to run cars on batteries without this efficiency bump. Electric motor have always been far more efficient than ICE ones, even in the 19th. In fact, the difference was even bigger, because combustion engine sucked hard back then, whereas electric engine didn't make as much progress as combustion engine ones (that doesn't mean that they didn't make progress, they did, but there's far less of a difference between an electric engine of 1920 and the one in a Tesla, than between an ICE engine then and now).