> I can go the mountains, the beach, work all in under 30 minutes. The user experience is great (minus traffic, but that is orthogonal to the vehicle itself).

That last part is the logical flaw: you’re acting like traffic is some random coincidence when it’s actually inherent to the design. Cars are inherently inefficient because you’re using over a hundred square feet of space and 2-3 tons of metal to move on average 1-2 people but because they’re familiar people who drive a lot tend to make excuses or simply not recognize those drawbacks - it’s always someone else making traffic, adding another lane will fix it even though that’s never been true anywhere in the world, it’s “under 30 minutes” because they’re thinking the best-case travel times from where they parked to the general vicinity of where they’re going rather than realistic door to door times including traffic, parking, etc.

Similarly, it’s not rolling back the standard of living to acknowledge that this lifestyle is expensive ($11+k USD/driver/year), unhealthy, and soaks up a lot of time. Yes, it’s nice to get in and go and that even works okay in a rural setting but in practice an awful lot of people are spending large fractions of their non-work time sitting in traffic and paying a large quantity of money to do so, all of which lowers the standard of living even before you consider the annual death and life-altering injury rates, effects of pollution (not just fuel but also tire and brake particulates), and the social cost of reserving so much public space for vehicle motion and storage.

> Similarly, it’s not rolling back the standard of living to acknowledge that this lifestyle is expensive ($11+k USD/driver/year), unhealthy, and soaks up a lot of time. Yes, it’s nice to get in and go and that even works okay in a rural setting but in practice ...

I have a family of 5. For me, a car is cheaper, faster, and healthier (less sunlight, less smoke, less pollution (or at least filtered once before it goes in your lungs), more capacity, flexibility in where I go...). It's cheaper for actual transport, for housing, for groceries, holidays, ...

But, frankly, even going to work by myself in the morning the car is still the cheaper and faster option when it's just me by myself. Even if I have a 15/20 minute walk from where I park to where I work (I can, and do, take public transport for that if it's too hot or raining or ...).

And when we're 5 it starts at an order of magnitude cheaper. Except perhaps compared to flying, but compared to public transport it's just not a contest.

In Hong Kong, you can go to all of those places in 20 minutes from most populated areas, and you don't need a car to do it. The trains are shielded from rain and are usually well air-conditioned. You don't have to deal with parking and it's much safer.

There are downsides of course, it can be crowded and you have to be around other people. I think those are things people adapt to culturally, while things like dying in a car accident and sitting in traffic are less culturally plastic.

Hong Kong has a density that makes a car near-impossible to use and certainly not faster. Only a helicopter would be faster in Hong Kong. Hell, I'd say in Hong Kong the density of people is so bad, walking has all the disadvantages cars have in suburbs.

You will be constantly breathing in heavy pollution (in fact this is one of the main reasons people still use cars in Hong Kong: to avoid breathing in the street air). It will be hot, even in winter. It will be slow, the streets will be over capacity and slowing you down. Sitting down on the many train/metro/... just never happens at any time people usually travel. It's not fast, not even as fast as walking. You're in danger (despite crime being very low, there's a LOT of problems big crowds cause) ...

Sounds like a drug addict TBH. Smoking is great! You get to socialize, have a fidget toy, it's calming, fun, looks cool, etc. (Seriously, it is great! That's why it is addictive)

What if your work was a walkable distance? What if light rail and buses were dense and frequent enough where that was the fastest way to get to work. What if there was a train to go out to the coast? What if you did a rideshare to go junk the mountains?

Pinning it all on self driving at this point imo is continuation of the corrupt car culture that lobbies government and social appeal with absurd efficacy. I don't believe self driving will really ever happen (the complexity is too high), and that solution means that we can maintain the car-centtic status quo and even double down on it. I'm not sure if there were a more comforting idea than that - that we don't have to change anything, just wait for technology and everything we are doing suddenly is good and sustainable. Yet, there are all of the tools available to not require a personal car and have a better travel experience.

*downsides to cars: - super loud - pollution - you are traffic, and by travelling in practically the least space efficient, you are creating traffic - unsustainable, highway funds are often federally granted for new construction, yet the zoning connected by those funds do not generate enough revenue to sustain the upkeep. Each mile of road costs about 10 mil to build and the same to maintain over 50 years. Strip malls and suburbs simply do not generate enough tax revenue to support dozens of miles if roads to connect them. Given we had such a big glut of road building in the 50s, should not be a surprise that America's road system is falling apart. If our infrastructure were sustainable, would we even need "infrastructure week" or a "build back better" (my understanding is both of those were to focus mostly on car-based infrastructure). Point being, if that were sustainable infrastructure, we wouldn't need these one time surges and the roads wouldn't be crumbling like they are today.

Could go on, self driving is not an answer to many of the intrinsic problems to car-centric society.

> What if your work was a walkable distance?

It is a walkable distance, and it’s unsustainably expensive for how little space I get. Not to mention the fact that there aren’t any ownable properties in walking distance to work—renting an apartment is the only option.

Sure, huge investments in creating an amazing mass transit system would be awesome! But that’s nowhere near happening in the next couple decades. So why should I (or anyone) be asked to pay more to rent a tiny apartment near work where I can barely escape the city using existing public transit options?

you shouldn't. you should push for public transit expansion and looser zoning that allows for businesses to be closer to homes.

Ok. Already doing that. Doesn't seem to help, but doing that. In the meantime I do the car thing and live much more comfortably further away.

Chances are if you can drive to those things in under 30 minutes, you can probably ebike to them in just over 30 minutes. I bike a lot in my city. For a given 10 minute car ride, the bike trip works out to 12 minutes. In traffic, the bike is faster than the car, because of lanesplitting ensuring you never wait for a light cycle. The car wins out when you have an open freeway, but thats only in the late evenings really in socal. Personally though I generally stick to the parallel running residential roads that hardly see cars at all, even here in busy LA, since I can practically take the entire road and just bike down the middle and avoid people potentially backing out of driveways.

Traffic is absolutely not orthogonal to the vehicle itself. Almost everything wrong with cars as a mode of transportation can be boiled down to: they take up too much space for the number of people they transport.

I think you are overlooking the deadly pollution and the unjustifiable violence.