[hasmanean]

Yes that makes sense. Steam engines had to be larger to be more efficient so the best size for them was a locomotive.

Internal combustion engines are sized at a point where they are profitable and efficient.

Electric motors allow us to make terribly small cars, and their small batteries will mean even more efficiency improvements. Combined with self driving abilities and we no longer need to own our own car…just hop on the city infrastructure and get driven to your destination.

In fact if we make it small and light enough you could suspend the car from a metal rail and now have an extra lane up in the roadway above the regular traffic. And then you can add another metal rail layer…and another. And you no longer need intersections because the rails can dip down or up to cross each other. So the biggest source of traffic latency (stoplights) and bandwidth limitations (not enough road surface area) will be eliminated.

Eventually we may build entire city blocks pre-fabricated with vertical and horizontal elevators inside, so you no longer need your own vehicle to navigate. Heating costs will be proportional to the external surface area and not to the volume enclosed by the building.