In Hong Kong, which is one of the densest cities on earth and probably the world capital of public transit, many families (at least those who can afford to) still prefer to use cars to get around.

It's just easier - until car sharing is functionally seamless and available more-or-less instantly, that will continue to be the case.

There are apparently ~500,000 private vehicles in Hong Kong (population 7.5 million). While I'm sure there are plenty of rich families doing that (perhaps partially as a status thing), it's not the norm.

Apparently Tesla isn't having much luck selling its cars there anymore anyway:

https://qz.com/1024886/nobody-in-hong-kong-wants-a-teslanasd... https://www.ft.com/content/2b8eb480-0a45-11e8-839d-41ca06376...

I live in Hong Kong. In a city this small and dense (and where a residential parking space can cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars), 500,000 private vehicles is a huge number.

Actually I misread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Hong_Kong#Private... and that's the number of licensed vehicles. Maybe a substantial portion are taxis/delivery trucks/etc.

But only one car per 14 people. I don't have the numbers for the US but I'd guess it's somewhere closer to one car per 2-3 people. Advances in public transport and ridesharing could lower demand for cars significantly. Sure, families and many others will still want to have cars but even if demand just decreases by 10-20% that's a huge number and could kill 1-2 car manufacturers.