Its a little overambitious to compare electrical efficiency and heat cycle efficiency. Electrical efficiency says nothing about how that energy was generated; if it was generated in coal, gas turbine, nuclear etc then you simply cant exceed carnot efficiency (solar is far less efficient than that for how much energy hits the panel); it also doesnt say anything about the extractable specific energy, which far favors ICE vehicles, efficiency be damned, ice will run longer on a fixed weight of fuel than an EV will on the same weight battery.
EVs in my experience have been a step change in car tech. Having a battery as a starting point rather than an alternator opens so many doors, from just having a stable grid to run devices on, the real time AI video processing, to the ability to play modern games on the cars hardware. The designs are far more simple than ICE, take the steering wheel off a tesla vs an ICE and you can get a peak at just how far behind ICE is in relying on complicated and expensive implementations of basic functions.
I just don't like these comparisons regarding efficiency, we arent really making a fair comparison; if we did EVs would probably lose considering the energy source and transmission losses, and it still would be a useless metric because thats not what anyone (sane minded) has ever bought a car for. All I care about is that the cost of ownership makes sense; the fact that the total efficiency of my own setup, where solar charges my car, is probably <25%, does not concern me.
EVs in my experience have been a step change in car tech. Having a battery as a starting point rather than an alternator opens so many doors, from just having a stable grid to run devices on, the real time AI video processing, to the ability to play modern games on the cars hardware. The designs are far more simple than ICE, take the steering wheel off a tesla vs an ICE and you can get a peak at just how far behind ICE is in relying on complicated and expensive implementations of basic functions.
I just don't like these comparisons regarding efficiency, we arent really making a fair comparison; if we did EVs would probably lose considering the energy source and transmission losses, and it still would be a useless metric because thats not what anyone (sane minded) has ever bought a car for. All I care about is that the cost of ownership makes sense; the fact that the total efficiency of my own setup, where solar charges my car, is probably <25%, does not concern me.