We've spent all this time on solar powered cars or electric powered cars which you have to plug in and charge up a huge battery to use. My idea (probably not a new one) is that instead it would make way more sense to build a road/grid system that your car could link into and draw power from. No battery, no gas (or only a very small amount of gas or battery power to allow the vehicle to go from home to the nearest grid-powered major road). Just electricity drawn directly from the grid to power that four seater with only one person in it. We all know that humans are way too attached to their vehicles for mass transit. And that's where road/grid systems have already been used. There's still one in place in San Francisco, in fact, but it only powers buses and smaller trains.
My thought is that the main missing piece is some technology which would allow cars to link up to the grid with two features 1) a person would have to be able to connect and disconnect from the grid easily and without exiting the vehicle and 2) it can't be an eyesore like the overhead wires we're used to in San Francisco. So that certainly suggests some system that would power up from below, embedded in the roadway.
I have no idea how any of this would work. I'm also well aware that, even if you could make it work, the infrastructure that would be needed to make it feasible for people to buy this type of car would take decades to install and probably a government to provide all the money and construction. Still, the idea strikes a chord with me, so I thought I'd pass it along.
I even have the beginning sketch of a story revolving around this technology. But that's an idea for another day.
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