Correct..currently electric vehicles in the US largely pollute more than regular cars and more than hybrids (It’s more efficient to put the fossil fuel directly into the car vs in a generator in a power plant and transfer the power over the power lines and then store it in a battery and then reconvert it back into mechanical energy. Not to mention the carbon footprint of the manufacturing of the battery packs).

However, if there’s investment in more non carbon electric energy production at a significantly increasingly rapid rate that would benefit the carbon footprint and electric vehicles would pollute less.So if you purchase an electric vehicle you increase carbon footprint in the short term, and possibly decrease it in the long term encouraging the industry to invest more in non-carbon electric energy generation. But it’s not clear how rapidly that is happening. So at the moment if you buy a hybrid that’s the best way to reduce the carbon footprint, not an electric vehicle. (Ask the average person where electric power comes from…they have no idea…they claim they’re helping the environment, but that claim is based on hype and what appears obvious but is misleading…typical America marketing BS…zero emissions is a outright lie).

It appears that the best option to clean the power grids is to use more nuclear energy — Eg France gets 80% of it’s power from nuclear and electric vehicles are very clean there. Or have more investment in solar and long-haul DC electrical transmission to allow solar plants to be put in the best locations with the most sunlight (US has all AC and is not innovating in DC like China is) . But the government isn’t smart enough to understand that and doesn’t care because such intelligence doesn’t garner votes or benefit the oil lobby.