>Eventually there will be self-driving cars, and there's no special reason to think that Uber will be the best at building them, or that its dominant position in the ride-hailing-app space will protect it from better self-driving-car businesses.
On the other hand, I feel that we will not have self driving cars for a really long time. Instead I believe we will have flying cars before that, who will solve the last mile problem. They will take you from the house to the hub and hub to the final destination. Buses can transport people between hubs.
With self driving cars you need to deal with existing regulations, traffic rules, other drives on road, people jaywalking, animals running into you.
However with flying cars - you literally have exponentially more roads in air (which don't even have to be built). No existing regulations (unless at risk of being in flight path). Technology is already there (make drones bigger). These drones will communicate using MESH networks leading to lesser risk of collisions.
I also feel that Elon Musk is doing something really smart with The Boring Company. If he can dramatically reduce the cost of building tunnels (like he did with space travel) - he could build a lot of underground roads at a lower cost and faster pace than roads on surface. No need to deal with buying out land and getting approvals.
Imagine if these tunnels are exclusive to Tesla cars, who can auto-drive these tunnels for long distances. No need to worry about other cars, animals, rain, snow, traffic regulations. All the problems that auto driving cars are facing now, will go away. Multiple Tesla cars will communicate with each other using MESH network. Teslas could be driving in these tunnels at 150+ mph and discharged cars could be swapped with charged cars on the way. Drivers might need to take over minimally just for the last mile.
If a tunnel like this could be built between SF to LA. It could be faster door to door vs flight.
To get started, a tunnel from SF to really South Bay could have an huge impact on the commute.
I do not have much experience of these industries. So these are my hypotheses. Would love to know what others think!
We already have flying cars. They are called helicopters, and they are only available to various government agencies, large corps and the rich.
Obviously you haven't had your flight lessons yet. Not only there are scores of airspace regulations, but flying is a much harder task to do as well. The freedom you're thinking off is akin to freely driving in a 4x4 on an open ranch, which has more to do with joy, and less with transportation needs.
I have a copy of the 1960 U.S. Corps of Engineers plan for the Bay Area. It totally predates environmentalism, and they were thinking big. They proposed five freeways on the SF peninsula - US 101, I-280, CA-1, CA-35, and one out in the bay on stilts. There's a second Bay Bridge at Candlestick. The area south of the Dumbarton bridge was to be filled in and developed.
Marin was planned as a heavy industry center, with steel mills at Tiburon. There was considerable WWII heavy industry in the north bay, including big shipyards, and the Corps thought that would grow, not shrink.
The SF peninsula would be a center for "business machines". They got that right.