Very true. Lithium battery is about 85% efficient in delivering the power that was put into it. Now add the energy lost in to level 2 charger (abt 10%) lost in the distribution system (8%) energy lost in transmission (8%) and you get back about 3/4ths of the electrical energy produced by the generators.
But wait! There’s more! Fossil fuel plants are about 33% efficient at converting fossil fuels (coal natural gas and oil) to electricity. If the grid were just fueled by fossil fuel then magical battery cars would burn fossil fuel at 21% efficiency, but I’m not finished ranting. Since battery cars weight about 20% more than ICE cars this reduces the efficiency to about 18%. Compare to 30-32% efficiency of modern vehicles.
However, on the side of the battery fanboys the electric grid is only powered 64% by fossil fuels with the remainder being nuclear and hydro (actually a real renewable) and the magic rainbows and unicorn farts - otherwise known as solar and wind. This gives battery cars a 27% efficiency. Problem is that solar and wind only produce electricity about 25% of the time at best. Hydro and nuclear are base load plants and run flat out all the time so when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun isn’t high in the sky combustion turbines burning natural gas pick up the load.
So in conclusion not only do EVs take far more resources to build, but they produce more carbon dioxide than modern ICE Cars. Not that there is anything wrong with CO2, but thats part of the false narrative that the Democrats and their accomplices are pushing the force us to use inferior but more easily controlled by government EVs.
If I could mine and burn my own coal, or drill and refine my own oil, or drill my own natural gas, I would. Those energy sources are way better than solar or wind. But I can't use those energy sources without paying through the nose for them thanks to the control-freak Dims. And the Dims are making it worse, with some of them saying it should come down to a social credit score, which to me sounds too much like a mark of the beast type system.
That's why I installed 10kW of solar in May of 2021 -- 4 months into Brandon's stay in the WH. I don't advise doing it unless you do the research on your power consumption habits, solar activity in your area and how that changes each month, etc. I did that research and expected it to produce 50-60% of all the power we consume (more in the spring, summer, and fall, less in the winter). On the 1-year anniversary I exported the data from the inverter into a TSQL database and ran that with queries against the 12 power bills. It produced 58.5% of all the power we consumed, even though halfway into the year I converted my two natural gas appliances into electric (going through a winter all-electric, which is do-able in Alabama).
So I implemented Phase II which was upgrade the solar system and replace my wife's old ICE crossover with an EV crossover (since her car needed replacing anyway). The EV was bought 11 months ago in June 2022 and we've put 24K miles onto it. The solar system upgrade was finished at the end of August. Since that time it has produced 75.5% of all the power we needed, including charging the EV (for about 20K miles, since the other 5K miles were on road trips and charging was done elsewhere except for the first 270 miles of each trip). I expect that throughput to rise to 80% between now and the 1-year anniversary of upgrading solar (since the last few months are summer months -- prime time for solar).
Solar and EV's shouldn't be mandated. I hate so-called one-size-fits-all "solutions". I particularly hate their plan to make the grid dependent on intermittent energy sources -- solar should be an option only in a decentralized form, and even then it should be optional. I hate the Dims' war on energy. I believe in free markets. And even if we're allowed to have car choices and energy choices in a free market, I don't suggest my fellow conservatives to run out and do like I did willy nilly. This kind of project is only for those who are committed to do a deep dive in your family's power consumption habits and driving habits to make sure solar and an EV will make you mostly energy independent without changing your habits. And even then, don't neglect simple energy saving things you can do to your home (adding insulation, sealing cracks, when I replaced my natural gas appliances I paid extra for energy efficient ones like a variable speed heat pump, my hybrid water heater helps me cool the home during the warm months with the free cold air it outputs being ducted into one of the home HVAC's receivers, I duct the air intake of my water heater from the attic to use the free warm air of the attic to help heat the water tank, etc.).
Situations like mine IMHO are the only times solar and an EV are worth it. And even then it's only because the Dims' stupid war on energy makes better options too expensive and, in some cases, not dependable. (i.e. 3rd world California's power brownouts are predicted to be the norm across the nation).