Wrangling the type system _and_ getting runtime type info

RuntimeTypes.scala

import scala.reflect.runtime.{universe => ru}

// Trivial class hierarchy
class NotionalObject
class Car extends NotionalObject
class Dog extends NotionalObject

// Not part of the hierarchy
class AbstractExpressionism

// Needs to be a `NotionalObject` *and* we want runtime type info (e.g. type tag)
def factoryConsumer[T <: NotionalObject : ru.TypeTag](a: () => T) = { 
  // Getting the type of T at runtime via: http://www.scala-lang.org/api/current/scala-reflect/index.html#scala.reflect.api.TypeTags$TypeTag
  println(ru.typeTag[T].tpe)
  a()
}

scala> factoryConsumer(() => new Dog)
Dog
res0: Dog = Dog@47a86fbb

scala> factoryConsumer(() => new Car)
Car
res1: Car = Car@346939bf

// Won't work, because we're specifying type constraints (T <: NotionalObject)
scala> factoryConsumer(() => new AbstractExpressionism)
<console>:12: error: inferred type arguments [AbstractExpressionism] do not conform to method factoryConsumer's type parameter bounds [T <: NotionalObject]
              factoryConsumer(() => new AbstractExpressionism)
              ^
<console>:12: error: type mismatch;
 found   : () => AbstractExpressionism
 required: () => T
              factoryConsumer(() => new AbstractExpressionism)
                                 ^