Well, its not that simple. As I stated earlier, the coal powered power plant has a 25% efficiency, ie: for every 1 Joule worth of coal that is loaded into the boiler, you get 0.25 J out, roughly speaking. Then the electrical grid is only about 90% efficient. So that 0.25J is now down to 22.5%. And the charger and car itself is only 75% efficient. So now you're down to 17% efficiency, from the lump of coal, to actual traction on the wheels. So if your claim that the ICE gets 18% efficiency is correct, that's actually better than burning coal in a coal-fired power station, and then transmitting such electricity over already overloaded infrastructure. Either way, there's a huge energy burden involved with extracting the coal from the ground, versus extracting oil from the ground and refining it into something usable in a car. The biggest gains are still in reducing unnecessary travel (ie: by rationalizing the financial sector and other non-productive uses of resources), and by making existing petrol cars more efficient through the use of diesel enginese. And air quality?? Not too many places in the USA have that, and the places that do would benefit extremely from other solutions to that. A proper transit system in LA, for instance. More transit in the SFBay area. Etc. Far cheaper than filling the roads with electric cars, that's for sure.
Nuclear power is the most efficient way to generate electricity. They should work on developing autos with small plutonium batteries similar to the ones used in some space satellites. Imagine a car you can drive that has a power source that could last 25 years. When you turn your car in, trade in etc.. they can reuse the power module.
For some crazy reason, I would think Hezbollah would be ordering A LOT of those cars. But seriously, wouldn't a plutonium battery be kinda dangerous?
Yeah, I'm aware of the conversion costs - same cost here (but no subsidy). The issue would be logistics - the US is a big country and it's not uncommon for people to say, drive from New Jersey to Florida. That's a lot of refueling stops. How many gas stations offer LPG in Australia? Are they concentrated in certain cities?
Pretty sure that sticking with large scale nuclear power plants that provide electricity to cars (via the grid) would be much better both economically as well as with regard to safety. Do you really want to have hazmat crews show up every time there is an accident? The cost of the RTG's used in satellites is astronomical (pun intended), even in mass production they would never be cheap enough.
Hey, I'm waiting for that new Obama model to come out. I hear it is going to be super light weight because of all the hot air they are going to put into it. And, its going to have a big "O" right in the middle of the grill. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe that was the Edsil. Funny, you don't see those any more.