I think you should stop trying to form an opinion before you get the facts. Internal combustion enegines (the Otto cycle type) are terribly inefficient--the better motors might get perhaps 20% efficiency (with turbos, etc). Diesels do better due to the higher compression ratio and greater heating value of the fuel. NO utility scale power plant has efficiencies this low! Hydro power is very efficient (over 80%), thermal power plants are in the high 30 percent range, combined cycle power plants are usually above 50%.
Why is electricity relatively inexpensive (compared to gasoline)? Think about it. In 1920 a kw-hr cost 22 cents, today it might be 12 cents in a high priced market. Yep, we know how to make electricity in an efficient manner. The blended efficiency of a utility with a good mix of generation types is going to be near the 50% mark. Heck, just a few days ago the Mid-Columiba was "selling" electricity for -$1 per MW-hr...that is right, people were paying other people to take their electricity. Now, that doesn't happen that often, but when was the last time someone paid you to take gasoline, hmmm, let me think, oh, that's right, never!
As other have noted, the losses in transmission vary from perhaps as low as 3% to perhaps 7%. Various utility tariffs typically have them at no more than 5%. Distribution losses might add a few percent to this, but no more than this.
Your attempt to show that electric cars are NOT efficient is doomed to failure--it simply isn't true at all! You need to spend some time looking at unit conversions and convert kw-hr (of electricity) and BTU (of gasoline) to a common basis and compare the "mileage" on a cost basis. What you will find is that an eletric car gets "gasoline cost per gallon" of about ~$1 per gallon. In other words, electric cars simply crush gasoline fueled automobiles--the actual figures depend on electricity costs, type of electric car, etc. The drive motor on an electric car is over 85% efficient.
The reason electric cars haven't hit it big is due to a the limited range that present battery technology offers and the fact that oil has historically been quite inexpensive. For a short commute electric automobiles are quite effective--the problem is that big automotive companies have yet to make the neccessary tooling switches to make them in large numbers. GM's EV-1's were basically hand made. With gasoline at the $5 a gallon mark you should expect to see more conversions of internal combustion engines to electric motors occuring--simple economics will drive this. You can recover the $5k to $7K that the conversion will cost you quite quickly.
Bottomline: Electric cars are much more efficient than internal combustion motor powered automobiles--the free market clearly demonstrates this through the common unit of $$$$.
