Internal combustion engines are something like 10% efficient. You can burn oil to generate electricity, lose a lot in transmission and have it still be more efficient end-to-end; once attached to power, electric motors are pretty efficient. What sucks, has always sucked, and is the reason that electric cars are still less practical than ICE is batteries. They're heavy; they're dirty to make; charging them tends to generate a lot of waste heat.

So instead of assholes for whom electric is convenient begging the government to force everyone else to inconvenience themselves, everybody should just use what's good for them and wait for batteries to improve. That they will is as certain as any research breakthrough, and in any case they get incrementally better every year.

Electric heating doesn't beat oil, either. Which makes me wonder how it is that electric vehicles are supposedly more "fuel" efficient on the cost per mile.

Because I drive about 4.5 miles on each kWh of electricity. Do the math. If you're paying 12 cents a kWh you can drive about 36 miles for every $1 of fuel. To match that in a gas car you have to get 108 mpg at $3 per gallon for gas.