The author is missing the bigger picture.

1) Generating electricity through coal and sending it over the power lines is WAY more efficient than transporting liquid gasoline to your local pump and burning it in your highly inefficient V6 engine. Electric cars do an equal amount of work with less fossil fuels burnt.

2) Given current technology, solar, wind, water, nuclear, etc. can only be practically harnessed on a large scale and can only be practically converted to a transportation energy as electricity to be piped to electric cars. Therefore this is a two-step process: (1) build renewable plants, (2) build electric cars. Tesla is working on 1/2 of the equation.