Overhead wires on freeways have hight issues when trying to power both cars and allow room for oversized loads. It works for trolleys because you have a full sized buss’s height plus the hight of the pickup bar which allows a lot of room below.
Wireless also has quite a lot going for it from a safety, noise, and maintenance perspectives. If they’re deep enough you could theoretically have a 50+ year lifespan while the road surface above gets replaced multiple times. There’s no metal on metal contact so their quiet, and it’s not like the wires can fall up through the road surface.
#1 is about cars not trucks. You could stick something physically tall enough but you’d run into serious aerodynamic issues.
#2 There’s wireless charging systems more efficient when using power directly than plugging in and charging an EV’s batteries. (edit with a 9 inch air gap) That’s quite a bit of wiggle room if the goal is indefinite range rather than actually charging cars on the freeway. So yes there’s definitely a trade off of efficiency vs maintenance, but it’s not that big a gap.
This just simply isn’t going to be an efficient, cost effective, or maintainable solution relative to alternatives. We’re also not going to have solar roads for the same reason. Sure take moonshots, but they should make sense from first principles.
People already pay a big premium on electricity rates for high speed charging. At ~98% coil to coil efficiency it’s quite competitive.
Semi’s need ~30kW for unlimited distance with multiple drivers and about half that with a single driver and mandatory rest periods. Cars have significantly lower requirements making this a long way from a moon shot.
Germany installed "eHighways" in 2019 which can let heavy trucks charge from overhead lines. Heavy trucks can't really afford much of a weight penalty for batteries (look up "tesla semi load factor" for a bunch of debunks), but cars for general transport have tons of weight to spare. Skip the cars, just go for the heavy trucks.
Giving up on cars is also giving up on a lot of potential revenue which increases payback periods etc. Considering how much of a chicken and egg problem such a system would face you’d want to maximize the number of vehicles that could use it.
Wireless also has quite a lot going for it from a safety, noise, and maintenance perspectives. If they’re deep enough you could theoretically have a 50+ year lifespan while the road surface above gets replaced multiple times. There’s no metal on metal contact so their quiet, and it’s not like the wires can fall up through the road surface.