(Brit living in SF here) Given that this forum is slanted towards America, you have to appreciate that the quality of public transport in London is nothing like what we have here in the US other than New York City.

You're not wrong about London (I never owned a car when I lived there and that was a decade before Uber) but your worldview is skewed. If you look at American history from the last century, in cities like Los Angeles the car companies actually bought public transport railways and dismantled them in order to promote a car culture. And this is what we have.