Rail sounds great, BUT it needs an enormous amount of infrastructure. It's great for the larger population centers (like here in Munich) and is continuing to be expanded. There's only one enormous problem with rail. It's not very flexible.

A car can travel from house to house (point to point - ppt in IT terms). A car can use almost any width of road. A car can drive on the sideburn or even in the grass on the side of the road, if an accident has blocked the intersection in front of you. Or turn around and find a different route. A car can travel on poor and non-paved roads. Only a horse beats the automobile (whether sedan, small truck, van, SUV or whatever) in flexibility! And a car can carry one to many passengers with or without luggage.

A train is not point to point and can only be used in combination with other means. Trains are great! But limitted.

When thinking about alternatives to a car, we have to replace the solutions that the car has offered us over the last century. Remember, the car more or less replaced the train in many (especially the less densly populated) countries.

Whether with internal combustion or electric or whatever really doesn't matter. Think PPT to come up with solutions! By the way, I think cars and trucks will definitely rely at least in part on cars and trucks - even if they don't look like the ones populating the roads today.

Cheers, Dom