Is this a plausible setting?

[jastius]

Ray - Or methanol synthesis, for use in fuel cells perhaps, could be an option for vehicle use. Cheap, clean energy gives you a lot of options.

Actually, battery technology might be good enough for the job - combined with another technology just about on the horizon, this one being driverless cars. And maybe with robotic battery-changing units as well; the recharging stations keep a stock of full batteries, thus eliminating the tedious wait for the battery to recharge. One might end up with a situation in which actually owning a car is seen as rather eccentric; the normal thing to do is whistle up a car, which arrives at your house in about 15 minutes and takes you where you need to go. (And recharges itself en route, if necessary.)

This all sounds a bit utopian, doesn't it? Well, the AI Rights movement might be brewing up a little, much as the civil rights movement of the 1960s did. And, of course, there are going to be quite a few people who were living rather well before the upheaval, had to start working for a living - and don't much like it.

Toby - A society with efficient near-sapient AI and distributed manufacturing could be rather resistant to attack. No large items that are actually important to blow up, and of course the nanofabs could switch to manufacturing Terminators...

Umm.. They are already switching roads over to being electrical charginmg stations.
Dead easy to do. Pliable solar panels built into the surface of things..n ow in places like Texas and Arabia... Funnily enough.
Coupled with a charge strip hankging from the car.. Near limitless proplsion from constantly recharging batteries.
Also the driverless cars could be train tracked upon a rail and driven by magnetic propulsion. Like the high speed trains in Japan.
The individual car carriages of the vehicle mini train could separate off along side rails to each village as they are gotten to.
Water based transport for heavy goods d upon a canal system is an efficient transport mechanism as well. Then there are biomass steam converters. A steam powered car.
Quite efficient. Could make the fuel source to be methanol, straight bio matter, or use whiskey, the village still. Everybody makes the moonshine and uses it for petrol and lamp oil.