If the taxi is soiled then the next passenger indicates this via the app. The taxi is sent for cleaning and the previous passenger is charged for the cleaning. Also, there will be cameras inside in case it has to be proven who made the car dirty.

If people have to pay the cleaning bill they will be careful not to make a mess.

> If the taxi is soiled then the next passenger indicates this via the app

So riders blame the mess on the previous passenger. Then the taxi company installs cameras. It’s all gross (and yes, I’m aware many taxis have cameras already).

Trade offs. Now we exploit humans, pay them quasi minimum wage, and we get the occasional rape story.

Self driving taxi will be a new possible way to get from A to B, and people will chose their own trade offs.

Probably human driven taxis will become the luxury eventually.

That sounds horrendous, honestly.

You won't have to use the service, but if you do then companies will have to have a way to protect the service from abusers.

This doesn't work for the most common issue with taxis: the smell.

And often that is the hardest thing to get rid of.

Great. Let’s give companies even more ways to violate privacy.

That’s the theory. If doing the right thing is not the default, it’s bound to get bad pretty fast.

Well, considering that these won't allow anonymous usage this can be mitigated by kicking out "bad" users and big fines. Also cars can visit the cleaning zone frequently.

For "free floating car sharing" (DriveNow/ShareNow, Yandex.Drive, ...) this seems to work quite well.

I’ve seen the shared cars in Paris. They are completely awful.

This isn't much a problem in terms of self-driving, but solutions to this aren't hard; eg. someone could use the app before they enter a self-driving taxi to report that the car has stains, trash, food, etc. left in it. The company behind it could then queue it to be cleaned.

> I’m imagining how gross a taxi would be that doesn’t have a driver to provide passengers a low level of behaviour moderation.

I've talked to a number of uber drivers. The cameras recording the passengers are a much greater inhibitor of bad behavior than the driver.

It'll probably just be smooth, hard plastic.

BART went with vinyl because the riders were really uncomfortable with the old wool ones: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/how-bart-fina...

Hard plastic covered in the last rider's vomit :/

Doesn't happen on GetAround.

Except if you are living in Japan.