Coal and especially nuclear make a lot of sense for non motive applications. There are nevertheless significant inefficiencies (losses) in power generation and transmission. Every transfer of energy from one form or one medium to another has losses ... some substantial. In a pressurized water reactor, for example, heat from fission heats water in the reactor ... there's heat transfer from the fuel to the clad and from the clad to the coolant - each with losses. The primary coolant (pressurized water water) heats secondary coolant producing steam for the turbine (same deal transmission from primary coolant to steam generator tubes to heat secondary water to steam) - most steam generators are U tube type that produce saturated steam (not nearly as efficient as super-heated steam). The reactor, piping, steam generators, pressurizer, etc are all insulated, but still lose significant heat; if you ever go in the containment building during operation, it's hot - real hot ... more loss. Then there's the energy exchange from steam to mechanical energy (turbine rotation) which in turn drives the generator - energy exchange once again from mechanical to electrical. That's extremely simplified ... no consideration for all the other equipment involved ... for example, the reactor coolant pumps which are huge - we're talking motor/pump assemblies that are close to house size and around 10,000 HP - four of them. Then you get into transmission losses which are large ... the losses increase with transmission distance (and Nimbys don't want any plants close - especially power loving city Nimbys). The numbers are complex when you do an end to end evaluation, and I doubt there's much way you can claim that electrically produced fossil fuel is cleaner than simply burning gas in the car. Electric cars really don't make much sense unless you are totally nuclear, and we are far from that. If you're going to burn natural gas to power cars, then just do it in the damn car and quit the nonsense.