I honestly don't understand this. I enjoy driving, especially long distance. The benefit of being able to read a book or look at my phone rather than listen to music or an audio book is not worth anything like $8.50 an hour to me.

The general inconveniences of long distance drives like planning food and toilet stops, or delays due to traffic, weather or accidents would still be present.

I would pay a lot to be instantly transported to my holiday destination, but almost nothing to get there in the same time with someone else driving me.

Other people don’t like to drive, simple as that. Some people would like to fly but can’t afford the ticket so they have to make a long miserable drive. Or maybe it’s one of those destinations that is a 5 hour drive where a car clearly makes more sense than a 45 minute flight (that ends up taking 5-6 hours door to door). Im sure you can appreciate how pay by hour would be a huge upgrade in this case.

The situation with the 5 hour drive which would be a 45 minute flight + 4-5 hours of flight overhead is completely orthogonal to whether or not the car is self-driving.

If you like to drive, you are fine with or without autonomous cars. If you don't like to sit in a car for 5 hours, you are SOL in both cases. Only if you hate driving, but do enjoy sitting in a car not driving do self-driving cars add value.

It’s not orthogonal. Self driving 6 hours makes the drive a net positive. It goes from unpleasant/brutal to a net positive where you can sit in the car and do other stuff.