To non-europeans in this thread: there already exists a transporation system in which you can sleep and get to your destination safely, it's called public transportation.
Related to TFA: I got to experience the extra called "first class" on a Mercedes Class S (an entry level one, but it had that one extra), where the rear seat (on the passenger side) becomes basically an airliner first class bed (and there's no room for a passenger next to the driver anymore). That is what I call a car I can sleep in and when I'll have a self-driving car, that's the kind of "bed" I'll want.
I hope resourceful engineers working on self-driving cars think about comfort and get to experience that "first class" extra that the class S offers (not that Class S cars are my thing: they're not but, darn, was that bed good for a car).
(Bonus points if that was the last train and now you can't get back until morning. Double bonus points if they forgot to check and you've woken up in the depot)
Many people that live in the US, Canada, Australia, Russia and others don't live in densely packed cities and suburbs in countries you can drive across in an afternoon. Some of us live in towns with less than ten thousand people, hours from a population center with more than 100,000. Some of us live in towns with a few hundred. I've driven through towns with populations in the single digits.
It's autonomous to you, but someone else is driving it. There are whole teams of people who keep those systems going for you. That's a solution? Just because you outsource your driving to someone that makes less money than you doesn't make you better than everyone else. You ignore your externalities and pretend it is a sign of superiority and sophistication.
Imagine someone talking about loneliness and ways to alleviate it and someone replies "that's easy, get your mommy to tuck you in at night and read you a story." That's what you sound like to other people with comments like this.