I love this article because it reveals just how terrible many of us are at truly understanding the impact that new technologies can have in the world. The author takes the possibility of self-driving cars and then basically predicts what the world would be like if we did EVERYTHING EXACTLY THE SAME except for the fact that there is no human driver.
Except that's not how this works. No driver means many of the costs of operating the vehicle change -- including the cleaning cost. It will become far, far cheaper to clean the vehicles, not less. Fleets will be able to intelligently organize themselves to drive to cleaning stations in the most efficient manner. With dedicated self-driving cars, it will be trivial to install a ceiling mounted camera in the car. You could simply take a picture of the car before the customer enters and after he leaves, and simply diffing it could give you some estimate of how "messy" it is -- and it could even be used to alert customers if they left something in the car. Accountability for what the customer does in in the car will be higher than ever.
Self-driving cars will make taxis cheaper AND cleaner.
Except that's not how this works. No driver means many of the costs of operating the vehicle change -- including the cleaning cost. It will become far, far cheaper to clean the vehicles, not less. Fleets will be able to intelligently organize themselves to drive to cleaning stations in the most efficient manner. With dedicated self-driving cars, it will be trivial to install a ceiling mounted camera in the car. You could simply take a picture of the car before the customer enters and after he leaves, and simply diffing it could give you some estimate of how "messy" it is -- and it could even be used to alert customers if they left something in the car. Accountability for what the customer does in in the car will be higher than ever.
Self-driving cars will make taxis cheaper AND cleaner.