Well I think you’re accurately glimpsing Elon’s automotive endgame there. For the individual, even in suburban and exurban areas, car ownership will become completely optional if not undesirable for the majority. You will always have the enthusiast niche, but your typical suburban commuter will save boatloads of time and money overall simply hailing a robotaxi whenever they need to go literally anywhere. Imagine no car insurance, no maintenance, no repairs, no inspections, no registration, no dmv visits, no car payments, no risk of tickets or DUIs or accidents, and most importantly no compromise on freedom of mobility (any destination at any time, on demand).
Of course, this depends on a comprehensive network of fully autonomous self-driving cars. I know that’s been the goal all along, but I honestly think — and I think Elon’s beginning to realize this too — there’s a non-zero chance that AI may need to become practically sentient in order to tackle existing roads as well as a human.
From a first principles standpoint, the easiest answer by far would be to fix the roads by making their laws and layouts adhere to a logical standard, but considering the myriad local, state, and national jurisdictions involved, doing so would probably be so monumentally difficult to achieve that it makes the problem of digital sentience seem trivial by comparison.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23401269/1221049623.jpg)
