Congratulation rexreid for the forward thinking question!
Note for the devil advocates: your inputs are very useful to identify risks & obstacles before they arise. This being said, I suggest you propose possible solutions to each problem. It will give a positive spin that will avoid our thinking you work for a muffler manufacturer... ;)
A concept is being promoted in Quebec (Canada) to develop a high speed public transportation system based on a high power electric motor-wheel designed in the 90's in Varenne nearby Montreal by scientists working for a public electricity research institute (here's the link to the division of Hydro-Quebec which own the patents:
http://www.tm4.com/electric_corner_module.aspx). The concept in question is a suspended monorail using 16 wheel-motors, able to rapidly accelerate about 60 people to 250 km/h (155 mph). This infrastructure would link the major cities of the province. See the following links for a depiction of the concept:
http://trensquebec.qc.ca/description-du-monorail & http://web.mac.com/pierrelanglois/PLanglois-PCA_Eng/Home.html (lower left section)
The tours and rails would be located in the free area between the lanes of opposite directions on the highway. Since the rail itself would be covered, it could operate in snow storms and freezing rain without the need for snow plowing (a high priority concern for those of us up north). The monorail would be high enough to pass above the overpasses making this affordable compared to the cost of re-building our rapidly aging roads (because of the harsh climate in our area).
Assuming this comes to fruition some day (may this day come soon), the cars on the highway would have access to an energy grid. With a properly equipped car (i.e. With a pair of electric motor-wheel and a retractable & steerable pole to tap onto power lines beneth the monorail & about 15 feets above ground) the cars could use the electric energy. The cars could use their own batteries to accelerate to reduce the load on the grid. With the motor-wheel of TM4, the decelarations are used to return energy in the system (batteries or grid). When in a traffic jam, the motor-wheel don't use energy.
In town, these cars would use batteries or a secondary combustion engine (i.e.: hybrid cars).
In Quebec, our grid is mainly energized by hydro and wind power. This would make this transport strategy the cleanest in the world. The same couldn't be said for states using coal to generate electricity...
Theree are a lot of technical challenges but whenwe think about it, there was a lot of challenges with fossile fuel burning cars. Nearly a century of research, engineering and trial/errors went into it. We need to put pressure on our governments representitive to get investments done in this domain. If the government don't work on putting the infrastructure in place, the car companies won't. I seriously doubt GM would build cars it they had to build the roads themselves too. Same with electrified highways and high speed public transport. The public sector has to invest in this area to foster development of a green transport economy.
Keep on the brainstorming and ask questions to your government representatives.
See the following link for an example of citizen based lobbying: http://electrifiedhighway.com/Page_2.php
