Let me quickly comment. I think I got banned for shitposting in the shitposting community.

Edit1: no I am still here.

So let me start with my answer:

But there are no better modes of transport than cars. They are literally the most used vehicles on earth. This means they have topped every other form so far.

This is an appeal to popularity. Something being popular does not make it the best or good. Bikes are also insanely popular - with around ⅔ as many bikes as cars world wide.

And to my understanding this means that bikes are also a great way of transport. Second to cars.

Car usage also varies highly from city to city. Unsurprisingly those that have good viable alternatives have much less car usage. Build lots of roads you get lots of cars.

Bikes also need roads. And you need roads in cities anyway. You need them for emergency vehicles, such as ambulances, the police, fire trucks, you need them for trucks transporting goods, you need them for craftsman repairing your housing. You need them to build housing in the first place. Car infrastructure is irreplaceable from the beginning. And I believe to already repeat myself: you might use it if it’s already there.

Self driving is not a solution to the massive inefficiency of cars; it’s likely to make it worse.

Cars are already extremely efficient at maximum loadout. And self driving might not increase the efficiency further (electrical vehicles will), but if cars become self driving, than this car can drive to you. It doesn’t need to be placed in some cramped up neighbourhood. It can be stored in specialised parking lot building. Now if those cars are owned by some company, as a car sharing offering, then this would reduce the overall need for more cars, as cars are most of the time standing on the side and not in use. This way cars would be used much more frequent.

Improving the quality of a mode of transit generally results in increased usage - this is known as induced demand. Not needing a license nor having to pay attention means more people will opt for the car instead of alternatives, resulting in more congestion.

This is partially correct. Self driving EV under control of a. At sharing company would solve this problem. The solution to the current situation (even though I don’t think it’s so dire) would be to invest into research for self driving vehicles and battery technologies. Only a fool tries to go back. Back to old practices. We need innovation instead of backwards looking thinking. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t look into other ways of transport, such as rail. It does indeed have its applications. But cars are there to stay.

They’re also unlikely to reduce the number of cars per person. Assuming self driving cars are cheaper than the current situation why would people voluntarily sit next to a stranger in a locked metal box when - for less than they were paying before - they could not do that. They’d also be trading off journey time - the number one thing people care about in regards to transit.

As I already said, self driving cars come with the benefit to reintroduce the concept of the taxi, just with less cost for a driver.

So more people would use cars, but cars are parked unused 95% of the time, isn’t there efficiency to be gained there? Yes, most likely. But the thing to remember is the majority of cars are on the road at the same time during peak hours. Even if you double the efficiency here you’d at best be reducing the parking needed by 5%.

Not quite, as those cars could be used for transport at night. To deliver goods to destinations in a city. Especially smaller shops could make use of said system. There might also be other uses that I do not remember.

You are right though in regards to cars not going anywhere. They are a valuable mode of transportation, especially in rural areas. Hopefully self driving won’t make car dependence even worse.

The future will be a dystopian shitshow. No matter what kind of transport will be there. But innovation will go on. Just think about all the life improvements of the past decades. In only a hundred years so much changed. So quickly.

And now AI is coming. And this comment has been partially written with AI. Because my English sucks.

At this point I am sure that every problem will be solved eventually. The only problem will be that each solution creates new problems. But what would we do without our problems. And without the constant need to solve them?