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I agree on the solar thing, but if you were really going to push the envelope its a step(and some manufacturers claim to be getting close to the paint).
It's more simple to swap out the trans for an EM, but then you still have to spin an axle thats 4-5 feet long and several inches in diameter. And the EM's could attach to the wheel the same way your axle does, through the lug nuts. Put it up on a floor jack pop the tire off and screw the heads down tire changed. same as it is now.
The unsprung issue I had considered but had not resolved, and in light of presenting the best argument did not bring it up. I think it was yokohama that was designing a wheel that was not inflated but ran alot like the lunar landers piano wire mesh(although it was aluminum slides). It would allow for the same deflection the rubber tire would give and have a much greater life span. Use the same concept just use thinner sheets or more flexible alloy to give greater deflection to protect the motors. Or combine the two standard tires and the non-rubber part(steel, aluminum, whatever) wheel would have additional flexibility to add deflection.
Or just straight up use rugged motors to start with.
Another plus about the wheels attached to a very short shaft and then the motor is if anyone of them failed the car could easily still reach its destination. It may even be possible for three of the motors to fail and still be able to limp to a service station. If the ICE gave out you would still have some very tiny amount of time stored in the thermal energy in the pipes and chassis around the stirlings and your three total batteries to juice you a very short range(maybe around a few corners into cell range).
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