The standard deduction ($0.58/mi) is very high. The marginal cost of driving depends on how much you drive. Driving the US average 15,000mi/yr, you can buy a nicely-equipped Mazda 3, insure it, fuel it (at CA gas prices), and throw it away when the standard warranty expires every 5 years for $0.53/mi.

This cost is dominated by the production of the car and goes down almost linearly to something like $0.25/mi before maintenance would even be an issue.

This is cheaper than almost any other form of transport.

The road system is essentially free at this scale.

There are no significant subsidies that make this possible. It's just that cheap. And most of the cost is production – a positive-sum activity.

A congestion charge is a transfer payment (zero-sum). In general these should not be expected to significantly impact the value of civilization.

For one thing, the economy tends to route around them. A mortgage interest tax deduction causes house price inflation, for example. It's not clear there should be any long-run sensitivity of commuting times to commuting taxes. People are already paying their hourly wage to commute, and they will pay any tax on it also with that wage...