As many will have seen there have been trials of such a system.
Yes I was musing about something like that as well, not necessarily by conventional Railway but by 2040 many major roads like Motorways will be so controlled as will the passage of vehicles along them by external control that using them will be more like driving a train where if you step out of line the systems take over control. In such an environment where it will no longer be possible by bending the rules and doing a tad more than the official limit people by that time may well be used to just sitting there while the vehicle either completely makes progress or the driver has very little input in any decision. As such it may be preferable to sit as a passenger and pass the time watching telly, eating, working on a device, shagging the missus or whatever. So if you have a vehicle engineered for shorter journeys it gets loaded onto something like a car transporter which takes you on the long legs . Sounds dead boring for people like me in our 60's but the twenty somethings now seem to prefer communicating on media devices rather than actually drive so will not find it too drastic.
What could be could be affected by the mass change to non IC cars is the aftermarket tuning industry , electric drive systems would seem to offer far less scope for modifications that IC engines have where numerous things can be changed , no big exhausts for the Kevins of the future or revving the engine to say "look at me". Has any mention been made of Motorcycles? Electric ones exist but there must be point where the need for stored power is less because they are lighter crosses to lees range than a car because the car can have more batteries in proportion to size.
G.Harman