That article uses the handiwork of a Han Baumann who made some napkin mathematics calculations and gets it all wrong:
The Myth of the Electric Car
One of the biggest problems with anyone doing this kind of calculation for the first time is that they don't know everything goes into the calculations in order to get a proper comparison. Hence the moment one of these articles starts making claims by discussing any number of efficiencies, if the article isn't a published journal article, chances are it gets things wrong. If they started with the Argonne National Labs GREET model and properly discloses adjustments to the assumptions in order to get proper Well to Wheel (WtW) calculations, the we might want to pay some attention. Otherwise, they're going to be wrong. Mr. Nathan Weiss's work, for example, highlights the folly of doing it on your own.
In any case, Mr. Baumann here is looking to do a hit job. He spends a bunch of words discussing efficiencies on the electric motor side, but then on the gasoline engine side, his entire comment is:
"According to Wikipedia, the average gasoline powered motor has an efficiency of 37.5 percent."
What Wikipedia actually says is this:
Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.
So he's wrong right away and anyone that deals with gasoline engine efficiencies knows this right away. Even without correcting anything else, his calculations of the electric motor side is 25.4% and that already beats the 18-20% efficiency of a gasoline engine given by the University of Washington.
Of course, he assumes that gasoline magically appears in the tank of the ICE vehicle while making all sorts of pains to sort out the production and the transport of electricity to an electric vehicle.
He also neglects that coal and oil production plants aren't the only way, and in many places, not even a significant way of generating electricity.
I could go on and on, but it's clear that this is work by Mr. Baumann is a sophomoric hit job. Then you add to it the commentary by various right wing nut jobs that don't bother to examine if the work is correct or not and it just gets worse.