[gambiting]

I don't believe that for a second. Free market will always do what it does best, which means that whoever can get away with running their robo taxis cheapest will win. So the most common ones will rarely if ever be cleaned inside(cleaning costs money after all, even if it's automatic). Once the technology is common, they will run the cheapest version of it, just like regular taxis today don't all drive Mercedes S class cars, they drive 15 year old priuses because those are the cheapest cars that do the job. Yes, there will be market for higher end, clean and high tech cars. But the most common service will be nothing like this. A good example is something like Ryanair - yes, the planes are shit, they are dirty, the service is poor, but they are immune to ratings because.....what else are you going to pick? On several European routes that I travel on, they are the only choice.

[keenmaster]

The cars will certainly be designed for robo-cleaning by the time we have self-driving fleets. In a free market with free choice, people will obviously pick the more hygienic fleet (which I don’t believe will cost much more, controlling for other factors).

The airline industry doesn’t work very well as an analogy. It’s not a completely free market, and costs are so high that it’s genuinely hard for airlines to provide a better experience without charging a lot.