The specific energy of gasoline does not matter unless put into context with the efficiency of the mechanism extracting it into useful work.
The mechanism in this case is an internal combustion engine and its efficiency is around 10%.
The mechanism for extracting useful work from a battery is an electric motor, and it achieves ~98% efficiency.
Which means gas is only ~4X more dense in terms of actual useful energy. So a battery pack weighing 4x more than full gas tank to get the same range is not unreasonable at all and is basically what a Tesla is.
My back of the envelope calcs say that if batteries energy density increases by 30-50% the weight penalty for electric cars disappears. It's a fuzzy line because it depends on the cars range.
Difference between electric and gasoline cars. With a gas car the marginal cost of extra range is low. With electric it's high. With gas cars the marginal cost of extra HP is high where with electric it's low.
The specific energy of gasoline does not matter unless put into context with the efficiency of the mechanism extracting it into useful work.
The mechanism in this case is an internal combustion engine and its efficiency is around 10%.
The mechanism for extracting useful work from a battery is an electric motor, and it achieves ~98% efficiency.
Which means gas is only ~4X more dense in terms of actual useful energy. So a battery pack weighing 4x more than full gas tank to get the same range is not unreasonable at all and is basically what a Tesla is.