I bought my first car 18 months ago—a 2009 Toyota Camry Hybrid with 220,000 miles on it. I paid $2,800. Since then, I've spent around $500 on maintenance, $40 a month on gas, and $80 a month on insurance. Before I owned it, I was spending $160 a month on Uber and Lyft just getting to and from work, plus extra for grocery delivery. And if I had to go meet someone? Forget about it. Buying the Camry was probably the soundest financial decision I've made. But buying a _new_ car wouldn't be nearly as sound. You pay more upfront, more for insurance, more for everything. And self-driving cars are making that calculation worse. They are already [operating in multiple cities](https://robotracker.app/updates?city_id=&operator_id=), and [the cost keeps dropping](https://x.com/i/trending/1986285419596517641). The $160 I used to spend on rides will someday become $40. The additional cost of getting food delivered versus picking it up myself will approach zero when there's no driver to tip. The economics are straightforward. In a few years, owning a car—especially a new one—won't make financial sense for most people. But people don't own cars just because of the economics. There's something reassuring about being able to go somewhere without relying on anyone else. About knowing you can leave whenever you want. There are social rituals built around driving that don't translate cleanly to summoning a car with an app. Take dropping someone off at the airport. Driving a friend somewhere is a lot more than just providing transportation. I'm putting in effort. I drive to their place, navigate to the airport, deal with traffic, drop them at their terminal, and drive back alone. The inconvenience I go through is part of the gesture. It signals that I care enough to spend my time, my gas, my attention on getting them there safely. With a robotaxi, I'd summon a car to their place, ride with them to the airport, then summon another car back. But they'd probably just book their own ride rather than coordinate with me. And even if we did ride together, what am I really offering? I'm not driving. I'm not responsible for anything. I'm just... there. It starts to feel less like helping and more like tagging along. Like I'm intruding on their trip instead of facilitating it. But maybe that's not quite right either. If I'm not driving, I don't have to worry about traffic or parking or getting back before some arbitrary deadline. We could have a real conversation instead of me watching the road. I could actually go into the airport with them. Sit with them while they wait. Say goodbye without one eye on the meter or the no-parking zone. So what is better? The version where the effort is the point, or the version where the effort is removed so we can focus on the connection itself? I think most of us would say the first one feels more meaningful. But maybe that's because we've built our sense of what it means to care around the constraints we currently have. Driving someone is meaningful _because_ it's inconvenient. Remove the inconvenience and it feels like something's missing even if what remains is objectively better. But this isn't just about airport runs. It's about road trips where you don't have to take turns driving. An extra hour in your day because you're not driving. The ability to work or eat breakfast or just sleep instead of gripping a steering wheel. No insurance payments, no maintenance costs, no responsibility for anyone else's safety. "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" is usually quoted as a warning. A dystopian future where we rent everything and possess nothing. But I don't think that's quite what's happening here. I'm not sure if we're being forced to lose ownership. We're losing it because it stops making sense. We will choose to lose it because the optimized version actually works better. We will, for the most part, stop owning cars. And I think we will be happy. Not because of frictionless convenience, but because the time, money, and mental overhead we get back will be worth more than the gestures we used to make by driving. But I also think something will feel different. That driving someone to the airport in a car you own will remain, for a while, a more meaningful gesture than riding with them in a car neither of you controls. Not because the outcome is better, but because we've tied meaning to effort in ways that don't transfer cleanly to optimization. And I suspect that's something we'll eventually forget we ever cared about. Not because we're shallow, but because the new version will work well enough that the old gestures will stop feeling necessary. We'll find other ways to show we care. And we'll be happy.