Aside from the advantages of load shifting and the potential for...

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    Aside from the advantages of load shifting and the potential for distributed storage when idle, even on a fundamental level it is still more efficient to power vehicles with fossil fuel generated electricity than with liquid fuel.

    If you combine petroleum refinery efficiency of 85% and internal combustion engine efficiency of 25%, you get efficiency of about 21% overall.

    For gas-generated electrical, you can take 60%thermal efficiency at the generator, 80% at battery charge/discharge and 75% at the electric motor. 36% efficient overall.

    For coal-fired at roughly 40% thermal efficiency gives overall efficiency around 24%.

    With vehicles being idle most of the time as acorn has said, we would usually be able to choose when they are charged; Not when we're on long road trips, but certainly the other 99% of the time. So they will often be able to use off-peak base load power that would otherwise be wasted, in addition to making effective use of intermittent renewables.
 
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