Solar roads are stupid because they're a terrible use of resources. You could literally build a roof of solar panels over the road for cheaper than you could build a 'solar roadway', and it would be more efficient to boot. It's nothing to do with idealism - if you were being an idealist you'd be backing a less inherently handicapped proposal.

>inherently handicapped

With today's assumptions, sure. Who's to say some material scientist with a trickle of funding doesn't find a way to mix in some cheap leftover metal into an asphalt mix and wouldyalookathat, for some reason you can now plus a USB cable into the road and it'll charge your phone. I'm being silly, but my point is exactly that: we just assume it won't work because yea duh, it won't work if we don't investigate it beyond "huh, if you put a car on a solar panel, it breaks. This is impossible, clearly."

Idealism is a belief in something unrealistic. It doesn't deserve a place on the stage of solutions. Dave Jones from the EEVBlog [0] channel did a bunch of videos explaining why solar roadways are a bad idea.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog/search?query=roadways

The problem with solar panels is not that we lack a place to put them. Solar roads don't offer anything other than a bad place to put solar panels (under the tires of our cars).