To be fair, cars are the best option in a landscape designed, subsidized, and built for cars. Most people lack the mental capacity to imagine anything different. An GPS monitoring ankle bracelet is "freedom" if your only alternative is prison.

It's all part of the broader solution.

Self driving electric cars will likely replace the role of traditional taxis. That's why they are being developed, taxis aren't a replacement for public transport and neither would fleets of autonomous vehicles. High speed rail should replace flights, public transport and bike lanes in denser population areas replace cars, and autonomous vehicles replace taxis for where public transport routes aren't available or viable.

Instead of owning an expensive car, which sits unused most of the time, you would call up a self driving car which would scoot to your location, take you where you need to go, then go do the same for someone else. We wouldn't need anywhere near as many vehicles and nowhere near as much parking infrastructure if this takes off.

The cars could all head to a depot out of town when they need recharging or maintaining. There are plenty of efficiency benefits when it comes to traffic too. The vehicles could all communicate so you wouldn't have traffic jams, and traffic lights would only need to operate for pedestrian crossings as the vehicles could flow around each other.

There's a lot of benefits to the approach. The pain points will be whilst there are still human drivers getting in the way.