As long as it's safe (duh) and moderately comfortable, I'd be just as happy to read or suchlike. Chances are these cars have good internet connectivity as they're probably going to be used in cities and you can stick an arbitrarily large antenna into the car body, so work, gaming or video consumption are practical too (on your tablet or other personal device). what else do you need - a cup holder and easy-to-clean interior?

Think of this as a bike-commute substitute with a roof.

An interesting thought. How small can self-driving vehicles be? Would you ride a self-driving motorcycle? A self-driving wheelchair? How about a self-driving Segway? You get on, hold on, and it does the rest. The technology for getting this working at all (let alone safely) is a long way away, but perhaps it could happen.

Without the exercise capability.

You could remove the seats and install an exercise bike.

that's a terrible analogy :) ! more like a taxi without having to speak to the driver or a personal bus.

If only my bike powers and steers itself

Lets be clear here. The aim here is to let you sit back, browse the web, and click on Google ads.

this meme of everything google has to relate back to ads is wrong and needs to be retired. They already have non-ad revenues above $1B/year. They are clearly investing in non-ad businesses across the board.

It's because of the 55B they made last year, more than 50 of it was from advertising. I'm sure Coca-Cola is more than a soft drink company, but that's the main thing. The only real threat to google is a threat to their ad revenue. So, it makes sense to think of google in terms of ad sales.