I enjoy driving for pleasure and often go for days long drives. Driving back and forth to work however is definitely a chore. It sounded fun at first, I get to do something I enjoy doing before work, how bad could it be?

Turns out, spend a couple hours on the road everyday and you'll quickly get sick of podcasts or ebooks. You can't stop to look up details or check out the code/math/design because you're driving. You can't really do anything else too because you really should be focusing your attention on the road.

totally agree but aside from the joy of driving, which I genuinely appreciate, most of my driving is of the kind (commuting, sat in traffic) where id like the driving bit to be taken away and any number of alternatives presented. Also sleeping is essential. Productivity is surely about what you do when you are awake, the problem with driving is that it demands constant attention so surely that has to make it (equally to anything else that requires constant attention) the most unproductive activity there is (initial caveat aside)