What if you don't live in a city? Almost every argument for self-driving cars and the sharing economy collapses when you don't live in Silicon Valley or higher density areas.
Which is exactly the argument I wanted to make ;)
> It would be wonderful for me to go to bed and wake up 1000 miles away.
Trains do that already :)
Not-so-commercial robot car pools might even start getting viable in rural areas, because some countries mandate a minimum level of public transport coverage and basing a few robocabs in remote villages could be many orders of magnitude cheaper (and certainly more useful) than repeatedly driving an empty bus around just to fulfill a schedule so sparse that only the most desperate will ever bother using it. Another angle that might lead to pockets of rural adoption much earlier than expected: many rural populations already have a lot of experience with pooling agricultural vehicles, this could occasionally be a seed for adopting local pool e.g. to support the elderly and doubling as a fallback for personal vehicles.
Well, tough luck then. We have to make some sacrifices for the environment.
Our ancestors not that long ago, merely 50-70 years or so, walked on foot, for miles, to get to the same grocery store.