Maybe I should patent the idea of putting the motor in the car and doing away with the ropes altogether. I.e. imagine a vertical electric train.
If you put the motor in the car without ropes then it has to be powerful enough to lift the whole car and all occupants. And if you want any hope of energy efficiency you'd need regenerative braking for when going down. This would make the lift car a lot heavier and the electrical system a lot more complicated.
Sometimes simpler is better!
Also, a main problem with high rise buildings is loss of floor space at lower heights (the water, electricity, waste, and person traffic of floors 2 to N all have to pass though floor 1)
Ropeless elevators can have a huge advantage there, as they allow one to hang multiple elevators in a single shaft that both service the full range of floors. Yes, that requires sophisticated software to prevent lift cars from having to pass through each other too often (some designs allow cabines to do that by making it possible for the cars to move horizontally, too), but it is an active research area.
"ropeless elevator" is not on Wikipedia yet; the best (but tangential and possibly slightly commercial) I could find Googling it is http://www.barkermohandas.com/images/Integrated%20Vertical%2..., which is about a system with wires that allows one to move cars horizontally by sliding them from one car frame to another using linear motors.