True, but at what cost? Oil from shale ain't exactly cheap. It might (and probably is) more economical be to build nuclear power plants and wind mills and plug-in hybrids. Do the math and then come back.
Oil shale is one possibility, as are oil sands and coal liquefaction. I actually meant extracting crude from deeper and more remote locations. I don’t t know the economics of oil shale; I do know that it takes a considerable amount of heat to extract the kerogen from the shale.
Nuclear plants are terribly expensive to build and also suffer from NIMBY politics. Currently we generate 20% of our electricity from nuke plants. Wind is a feel good measure. A typical wind mill is roughly 1 MW when the wind is blowing. My dual fuel plant (#6 oil/natural gas) is 1200 MW. You could probably fit about 8 to 12 windmills in the space if you removed my plant. For comparison, we generate less than 2.5% of electricity from renewable resources (not including hydro), less than 1.5% from petroleum, and a little over 20% from natural gas. 50% of our power comes from coal.
Regardless of where the electrical power comes from (and currently only a fraction is from crude oil derived products), to convert the 200 million cars in the US to plug in hybrids will require a significant upgrade in the distribution grid. Unless you can get everyone to plug their car in around midnight. I suspect people would just plug it in when they get home from work, then turn on the TV, A/C, and heat up their dinner. (A simple solution would be a timer however. If you can get people to care.)
I guess it all comes down to where you want spend the money. Infrastructure to continue driving internal combustion vehicles or infrastructure to drive electric vehicles. As for me, I don’t care. I don’t have a car. I walk to work. That and my Harley gets 50mpg on the highway and averaged 35mpg over the last year.