But I'm already working on it, actually. Rentable covered trikes and quadricycles with electric motors and storage. Slim enough to fit two to three units per road lane. Capable of multiple trips across town up steep hills before needing to be recharged, and remaining light enough to pedal (the default mode being lightly assisted power). Tow trailers and rear sidecars are an option, too.
I mean, you could also claim bicycles are obsolete and why not use scooters and motorcycles, but they have different use cases.
Cars are two-ton balls of complexity that last decades, operate in any environment and require mostly non-renewable energy. They've very costly, they take up a lot of room, they're expensive and complicated to maintain, and they're dangerous enough that you can't operate one without a license and we need laws and officers to regulate and police their use.
My vehicle is basically a four wheeled electric bicycle with a plastic cover. These already exist in many places with slightly different design. They've just never been designed specifically with dense urban transportation in mind.
Also, they're not intended to replace public transit. You can not get more efficient than a train, light rail or a bus. My vehicle is intended to provide the kind of personal transportation that a car is used for in cities while allowing for denser and more efficient transportation while also being safer and pollute less, to say nothing of parking, and cost of ownership.
Which is a sensible thing to do if the design parameters for transport that is limited to an urban region are significantly different from that of the typical car.
