Well here's some figures.
Pounds of CO2 per gallon of gasoline: 24.16 pounds
Pounds of CO2 per kWh for electricity: 1.348 pounds
http://www.travelmatters.org/about/methodology-transit
So, if your gasoline car gets say 25 miles per gallon (CAFE standards), that works out to one pound roughly per mile.
For comparisons sake, the RAV4 EV that was produced by Toyota, could get a range of between 80 and 120 miles, on 27.4 kWh from the nickel metal halide batteries. That's 36.9 pounds for the whole charge, and when we break that down to a per mile basis as we have with gasoline, that works out to 0.31 to 0.46 pounds per mile on electric.
You also need to consider that the plug-ins will be using new lithium-ion batteries. The new generation of car batteries will be increasing the range--higher power density battery-- by doubling the kilowatts per kilogram of battery.
Electric motors and energy production is way better than combustion engines. When you burn coal to make electricity, you're harvesting the heat energy to spin a turbine. When you burn gasoline, you're losing heat, out the tali pipe, in the radiator, engine oil, engine block. That's wasteful, and why electric is much more efficient than gasoline engines in your car.
Now imagine charging cars with better batteries with renewable energy sources, that's obviously where the best bang for your buck is. And then you say F U to the gasoline prices, and to foreign oil.
