Think about children! They are stripped of the independence of move, because they can not drive a car. And everything is so far away (school, after-school activities, friends places) so it takes forever to go there by foot/public transit.
And self-driving cars seem nowhere near the production-ready deployment. It's very strange to rely on a solution which may be probably somewhere in the future. Why don't you mention a teleport then?
Self-driving cars will solve that with this decade.
No we don't. Taxis are not a solution because they are INCREDIBLY dirty. You might as well be riding on train-cars worth of coal.
And public transit is worse, because it's inevitably slow and inflexible.
Edit: taxis are expensive not because they are cars, but because they need dedicated drivers. And here in the US even taxi drivers earn a somewhat liveable salary, and as a result they have a huge carbon footprint. But if you're OK with semi-slave labor, then it can work, agreed.
Public transit is excellent when you design for it. It can be fast and flexible. The problem is when the implementation is half hearted. Transit systems are things that become better with scale. The more you invest in them, they better they get.
When you say that "they are trying to push people into dense cities". One should read as "I want the govt to continue subsidizing construction of roads and suburbs.". Because can you really afford that lifestyle without making the ends meet, if you will have to fully pay for all of that?
And will you be able to easily afford a self-driving car, if that will ever come to existence?
And don't you think that you will fully own your self-driving car with open-source firmware running onboard? Most likely you won't. Think more of a subscription-based self-driving feature, which will have unpredictable pricing, and mandatory always-online. Do you really want that "freedom"?