The author sees all sorts of good things about electric cars. I drive them myself. I love cars. But...
The points the article makes about cars being part of a larger flawed system of urban and rural development are spot on.
'Self-driving' cars will only make this worse.
Even just the excessive prevalence of hard-top surfaces in roads and parking lots leads to environmental catastrophe when flooding begins.
Urban sprawl leads to farmland and natural area destruction.
The car is the ultimate symbol of entitled consumerist individualism, and it is becoming more and more unsustainable.
The net effect of every household being in car(s) with a population as big as we have is really bad, even if all emissions were to be eliminated.
If all the private investment money being dumped into self-driving technology at the moment were public money being put into urban mass transit, just think of what could be accomplished...