As much as I agree that decent public transport is significantly preferable to autonomous cars, this video is a bit of a straw man argument.

Self driving cars will never beat trains/busses on efficiency. But that’s not why people like them. The major selling point is the illusion we can sustainably keep living in spread out suburbs.

Trains will not stop at the doorstep of your mcMansion. Trains will not allow you to comfortably carry your biweekly Costco shopping. Trains will not provide you the luxury of traveling from point A to B without ever having to come in contact with the plebs.

Unfortunately, he kind of admits as much in the end of the video. Where says that self driving cars will entrench suburbia and will work in sparsely populated areas.

He’d have been better off focusing on the economics of self driving cars. E.g. how the vegas hyper loop is an insanely expensive money sink, unneeded musk subsidy, and just plain doesn’t work.