I always thought electric cars “filling up” at “electrical gas stations” was bizarre. If the major roads were electrified, electric cars wouldn’t need as much range, would be cheaper, lighter, better on the environment, wouldn’t need to sit for hours at a charging station. It’s a new and different technology hobbled by old ways of doing things.
Whatever motive force drives cars around is necessarily energetic and transmissible. It wants to dissipate, badly, and we've managed to trick it into doing useful work for us in the process. If we're going to have our mode of transport integrated into the human environment, enormous care has to be put into ensure that potential energy does not find it's way into humans, animals, buildings, etc.
Electricity is no different. Enough current (or exploding gasoline) to move a car is concerning enough to be around in the enclosed package of an engine. Enough current to move a road's worth of cars just hanging around on a third rail, or pantograph, or whatever is downright terrifying.
