In the case of cars with infernal combustion engines, it's even worse. Even for very efficient road car engines, more than 50% of the energy in the fuel is expelled as waste heat, through either the exhaust or cooling system. Of that smaller than 50% fraction, indeed most of the energy is spent overcoming aerodynamic drag of the car body, and friction from the tires.

Sidenote: F1 made headlines a while back they had achieved >50% thermal efficiency, with an incredibly complicated hybrid system that recovered excess exhaust energy from the turbo.