There are many small conveniences that come from having a personally owned vehicle, but I would ecstatically spend an hour or two loading/unloading my car every couple weeks when I go on a trip as long as it meant I didn’t have to sit in traffic for hours every morning because everyone wants to have their own personal aircraft carrier sitting outside their office for whatever reason.

But the car industry at large is so invested in this car-as-sanctuary idea that jumping into a random rental is often a frustrating experience. Pairing a phone for navigation or audio is a whole big thing. Finding a place that can rent a companion bike rack or other accessory like that for an outdoor trip is difficult, and supplying your own is usually forbidden - if you even feel comfortable betting on a generic enough model. Those 1% of activities where I really benefit from a car can be really difficult without the aid of a friend who owns their own personal vehicle, and it feels like that is by design a lot of the time.

Well, one can dream anyway.

There's a reason renting Jeeps in Death Valley is something like $200/day--assuming you have your own insurance that will actually cover how you intend to use it.

With subways like BART allowing bicycles, going around traffic jams and being economical and somewhat social, basically cars, taxis/Uber and public transit are fundamentally different services that strongly overlap.

Which means no one is going to be happy eliminating any of these and that makes it even harder for any self-driving taxi system since it would have to indefinitely navigate human filled roads and would add-to, not replace, all the traffic that exists now, threatening considerable congestion.