And you should be able to. But people who don't want that or don't have the means to afford it can have the benefits of automobile transport without the capital expense.

Consumers can already rent or lease automobiles. This is an operating expense, not a capital expense.

Rental cars are expensive because they are covering the risk and increased wear and tear of rental drivers. As well as the downtime of when the car is rented to you but you aren’t driving it.

Self driving cars would make this massively cheaper and remove most of the reasons to own a car. It would make about as much sense as owning a train for most people.

Yep just like how massively cheaper housing is to rent, right?

I use cars more like I use a hotel. Inconsistently on demand when PT doesn’t cover the route I need.

If I bought and sold a house every time I needed somewhere to stay on holiday, renting would be massively cheaper.

I’ve already done the math and uber occasionally is cheaper than owning a car. Self driving electric will be even cheaper.

how are you going to compare cars with no fixed location premium with housing? also utilization is totally different - cars sit ~95% of the time, housing can be nearly round the clock if you work at home. transportation is more like a utility/commodity whereas there are so many personal factors for where to live.