The comment you replied to is the typical "city-dweller" POV. What few people realize is that there are millions of people that live in rural areas where the taxi/uber/shared asset model just does not work.
I don't see the "shared asset" model working at all. Not clear if it even works at the moment -- Uber's business is mostly cream-skimming the wealthiest users. But a self driving fleet can serve most rural communities as well (at the expense of a lower utilization rate than in urban areas). A car sitting in a driveway most of the time is a very expensive luxury. Most rural communities are less wealthy than most urban areas. A set of self-driving vehicles near by is a lot cheaper than a lot of idle cars.
Electric, and pay-by-the-ride are not panaceas. It's an 80/20 breakdown. I have, at one point, lived a ninety minute drive from the nearest town. I don't see how electric can handle what is really an edge case. I also don't understand the economics of electric utes (pickup trucks).
One comment of mine, there is one gas station in his town, if that ever closed it'd make owning a gasoline powered car a right PITA because the next gas station is 40 miles away.
Edit:
No these services aren't suitable for everyone but they're suitable for a huge and growing amount of people, urbanization and civilization are the same thing. ICEs filling cities like Beijing carrying 1-2 people is literally killing people.
"The Census Bureau defines "urban" for the 1990 census as comprising all territory, population, and housing units in urbanized areas and in places of 2,500 or more persons outside urbanized areas."