Yeah. Power plants are nowhere near 90% efficient.

It’s worth emphasizing, though, that they’re still way, way more efficient than car engines are.

Also, regenerative breaking saves a lot of energy. Basically, instead of using the motor to increase the cars speed, you use it as a generator to recharge the battery.

The problem with solar is that the sun doesn’t shine overnight. The good thing with that is that we use much less power overnight than we do during the day.

If you’re relying a lot on solar, you need to build a big-ass battery that you charge during the day and use at night.

Alternatively, you build a nuclear or gas plant sized to overnight usage and run them 24/7. Then, you build way smaller batteries to handle dispatchability and smoothing demand over the course of a day. Nuclear is good for baseline power, and doesn’t come with the environmental costs of a gas plant. It has a niche.