Just what are you measuring?
In the first instance you are wrong about the Chevy Volt. It is not, nor was it ever intended to be a purely electric car. It is to be a series hybrid. It runs solely on electricity that is intended to be made with a gasoline engine. You also have the option of plugging it in.
A purely electric vehicle is not for everyone. It is not the best fit in situations where it is difficult to plug the vehicle in at any time. It may also not be the best fit where longer distances and heavier loads need to be carried. But in fairness consider that the ICE car is also not appropriate for some situations. It is so bad in close spaces that people have used it to kill themselves. It is not used inside of buildings and we wonder about the enclosed spaces of tunnels especially when traffic comes to a standstill. Even on open roads the air quality is noticeably worse with heavy traffic. In such places even the masonry of nearby structures is eaten away over time. What is happening to our lungs? About the only place that an ICE car makes some sense is in the countryside.
So an ICE vehicle is not a good universal solution either. I am not looking very far upstream here but I don't think such a view is favorable to the ICE vehicle if we fairly look at what is required to get its fuel into the vehicle. I don't think we need to complicate the issue. (see my negative answer here:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArmLPvZBc0szyxM49oWeXqvsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20091124190150AAzSpFg&show=7#profile-info-AA10955260 )
If we are honest and realistic we will recognize that we don't generally have the clean air that existed when the gasoline engine first became popular. The world has changed and a smart, observant individual will adapt to those changes. At the same time we have some standards of comfort and performance that we would like to maintain. The new solutions will not be the same as the old ones. The old ones were not that great if you ponder it long enough. We can do better.
About 49% of US power stations are run on Coal. They cannot be easily scaled back at night and therefore waste power. This off peak power can be used by electric vehicles with no increase in capacity required because battery electric vehicles are by virtue of their storage capacity demand shifting vehicles.
If you live in a cold environment it is possible to also pre heat a vehicle and store the heat in a thermal mass. If this is made with phase change materials, it would be like the heat packs that you put in the microwaves. Another solution is to precharge materials that have an exothermic reaction. This would essentially be a heat battery. Some batteries produce heat in their reactions that could be tapped for heating the vehicle. A solution that is currently being adapted for electric vehicles is air based heat pumps. The last solution that should be tried would be electric resistance heating because it makes little sense to use battery life for heat.
Let me go back to your series hybrid vehicle for a moment. Electric motors are very efficient and have torque from 0 RPM and so are a better way to power a vehicle. From here we can go in many different directions. There is an outline here to suggest some of the options:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aob1ShwbbDJeUj99Ziunumf95nNG;_ylv=3?qid=20091122184634AAHBdyj Putting a gasoline engine onboard solves a problem with range and would allow the ICE operate at its most efficient RPM. But such engines are heavy. If it were not always going to be used it might be better shifted to a trailer where it could be detached if it were not necessary:
http://www.zoomilife.com/2009/01/22/genset-trailers-an-answer-to-electric-vehicle-range-issues/#comment-871 In this way you would not have to be lugging around weight that you do not always need. A series hybrid makes a lot of sense for delivery trucks that must operate in and out of cities. Within city limits the vehicle could run on pure electric power and outside it would charge it's batteries. In this case additional weight would be less of an issue.
What about going to grandma's house in a pure electric vehicle? If this group could cross the country in a pure electric Tesla Roadster it is possible:
http://ecobrand.ning.com/forum/topics/renew-america-roadtrip It will take a different thinking to deal with new technology. It is coming and we will be wiser to embrace what is possible and be careful not to wine about what is different or we might be left with only buggy whips in our hands and no buggies.