[RayChuang88]

While that sounds great, I think by 2050, the days of motor vehicles and trains using internal combustion engines fueled by petroleum products will be over.

Here's the reason why: the development of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, a nuclear reactor that uses plentiful thorium-232 dissolved in molten fluoride salts as nuclear fuel in a liquid form. Extremely safe to run and with very little radioactive waste generation, LFTR's could be assembled on such a large scale that there will be enough excess power generated to do three things: 1) replace gasoline and diesel fueled internal combustion engines in automobiles with future electric batteries that allow for a single-charge range of 800 kilometers (497 miles), electrify all of our long distance railroad lines, and do truly large scale seawater desalinization to turn huge swaths of what was once desert into productive farmland.

[ModelBreaker]

Maybe the energy will be there. But progress in battery technology has been depressingly slow despite huge investments. The economy you describe does not exist without order of magnitude jumps in battery technology.

[nomad]

What about using that energy for cracking water for Hydrogen to use in fuel cells? They are making progress in that technology.

[dirtboy]

I think it would be more effective to generate hydrogen for motor vehicles.

[El Gato]

I'll believe the battery thing when it happens. Liquid fuels are excellent for storing large amounts of energy. Batteries can do that, but they tend to be even touchier than the liquid fuels.

But your reactor could power the process described, or other processes for converting natural gas to liquid fuel. For the trains, and lots of other things, electricity is great, if it's cheap enough. But "go where you want to go, when you want to go there" mobile power is probably not one of them, except in hybrid power trains which take much less battery capacity.