It's much worse than that. Buying electric won't help - that power still has to be generated somewhere, and building those vehicles in the first place is very far from carbon-neutral. The real answer is to walk, or ride a bike (or skateboard, or whatever). And don't buy a new bike, use a second-hand one from somewhere. And if you live so far from your workplace that you can't, then move.
In the USA we have an infrastructure largely built around the automobile. That isn't going to change anytime soon. Keep working for the change you believe in but don't expect it to change at the rate you think it should. It just ain't going to happen.
In the meantime electric vehicles do help. Even if they draw their charge from a coal plant. The coal plant is something like 30% more efficient than an ICE automobile. And the grid is gradually getting more carbon free. I expect the rate of adding non-carbon power sources to the grid to increase in the future as they get cheaper and the effects of AGW become more and more obvious.