Especially when you can automate switching rented batteries instead of waiting to charge them. Drive 4 hours out in a random direction, then 4 hours back for work, with nary a minute of downtime

This is already happening if you pay attention to all the vans and even cars with blacked out windows parking in your neighborhood, maybe even in front of your house. Stealth campers are very real, even if they don’t stick out as much as meth RVs.

You could already commute with cheap taxis (eg in the developing world). The more important thing is that people want to live in San Francisco, they wouldn’t be happy commuting from some far off place in the first place. And as stealth campers have already figured out, not a lot of places available to camp in your car even 40-60 miles out, so might as well be where you want.

But the idea that your car could just involve itself in traffic jams all day rather than pay for parking is interesting, it could also look for time limited but free parking and move on to somewhere else when that expired, which is more common outside the city. Heck, it could park at a shopping mall that doesn’t allow walk offs…because no one is walking off.

At $10/hr and 14 hours per day moving, that's $50k/yr just in fuel costs. You'd also want to consider depreciation and maintenance.

Already, though, you've got a budget of >$4000/mo for a more comfortable studio apartment.