Agreed that I'm skeptical-- but hey, that's what moonshots are all about. I suspect it won't be much more successful than 'what if all roads were made with / covered in solar panels?' but little harm in having smart people look into it

That was a pretty useless white paper on electric trucks with over-head wires.  Of course it's the most efficient electric solution, but how does the deployment compare with alternatives, such as BEVs and H2/ammonia power?

As I see it, the over-head wires have a chicken-and-egg problem (need a full deployment before it's attractive to vehicle owners), an aesthetics problem (for the vehicles and the wires), a powered lane congestion problem (unless you power all lanes), and a sex-appeal problem.  The other factor is that society will need the infrastructure for BEV charging and possibly H2 in either case.