Gasoline engines in road-legal cars have about 20-35% thermal efficiency. Just making the engine bigger and not caring about engine weight (like in ships or power plants) allows you to bring efficiency up to about 55%. Electric motors (as used in electric cars) are about 90% efficient.

Of course you lose some charging and discharging the battery, in the charger itself and in transmission losses. But just eyeballing it it seems like the power plant should come out ahead as long as it isn't too far away.