This is the solution Volvo has proposed except with guard rails instead of overhead wires because they are incredibly brittle. Almost anything can tear it down in inclement weather. At first glance it seems impractical because there are so many roads, but 95% of the time freight trucks say on the main highways. So you only need to electrify those.

As an added bonus, it makes self-driving trucks much much easier to implement.

The hardest part is probably standardization. You'd need buy-in from the US, the EU and probably most of South-east Asia for it to be practical.

Eh, electric trains still use incompatible standards for different regions of the same country due to historical inertia. In comparison selling trucks with a different electrical pickup for each continent wouldn't be a big deal.

I cannot comment on efficiency and the like but today in Milan, Italy the first few new on-the-road public buses "fast" (200 kW) charging stations went into operation:

In Italian but with images and videos: https://medium.com/lineadiretta/installati-i-primi-charger-h...

Wire trucks are tested in Germany and Sweden that I know off. I too think that it might actually be really viable to avoid tons of batteries - unless there is some technical issues I am unawere off.

Overhead wires work fine with the railway network but somehow I think that having all these independently operated trucks drawing power on one pair of wires might be a challenging problem.

A single train draws a lot of power (several MWs) but it's one entity and as such can easily be managed in respect to having the power system functioning. But having tens, maybe hundreds of vehicles draw power on the same wires would need to be coordinated somehow.

An inductive system under the road surface would seem easier to install and would work better with different vehicle sizes. Suspending lines across a multi lane highway would need a lot of structures.

There is no way you could pass enough current via induction without setting things on fire or microwaving the occupant of the cab (or both). If it was viable, people would be pursuing it already.

Even if it was safe, the efficiency is much lower, and it is a lot more expensive. Wires overhead are much cheaper than than wires in pavement. It is more expensive to put the wires in pavement, and you need a lot more to get the induction to happen.

Not induction but conductive rails are already in use on test stretches of road a few places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road