Trying to imagine being a passenger who’s just hailed a driverless Model 3 in the Tesla network. The car has been running for hours, it’s done 200 miles already that day. The car arrives at your location and you get in and you immediately detect a horrible odor as the car pulls away and then you see there’s a used diaper on the backseat and there’s fast food trash and beer bottles all around the floor and the car reeks but none of the windows are open. There’s no driver and the car is moving and it’s at this point you whip out your smartphone and try to reach a human thru the T Network app but all you get is a “we’re sorry all our customer representatives are busy your estimated hold time is seven minutes” and you realize you’ll be 2/3 of the way to your destination by then so you put the phone down in a cupholder without hanging up and quickly forget about it as you make the mistake of inhaling through your nose and you try to open a window but for some reason the windows are locked so you try not to breathe as the robot car makes its way across town on a two-lane road. Up ahead a school bus is approaching in the opposite direction and you see its blinking yellow lights go on as it slows down and then you see the bus driver extending the little stop sign along the side of the bus and the blinking yellow lights become blinking red lights and now children are getting off the bus and you realize this robot car is not slowing down and you hold on tight as you shout “watch out” but there’s no driver next to you to hear you and suddenly you hear a tinny voice coming out of your smartphone in the cupholder and you realize it’s customer service as your robot car whizzes right by the stopped school bus. As it passes by at the road’s posted speed limit you catch a glimpse of the shocked bus driver glaring at your robot car, his mouth open, clearly yelling at you while his bus horn is honking. Five minutes later you arrive at your destination and gladly get out as fast as possible. The robot car silently rolls away to points unknown. You go to your meeting and try to forget the experience. Your ride will be the robot car’s last for the day and now the robot car goes home to its owner who sees it pull into the driveway and up to its designated spot next to a Tesla home charger. The owner walks out, fetches the charge plug, plugs it into the robot car, and charges it, then opens the door, notices the stench, fetches some cleaning spray and towels, wipes the interior down, then, amid loud gripes and groans and cursing, collects the beer bottles and fast food trash and used diaper and throws all that away, then goes inside and signs into the Tesla Network - Owner Dashboard and checks who was the last passenger and finds your name and then reports you for trashing the car with beer bottles and fast food trash and a used diaper and leaves a very negative passenger reputation rating on your record even though it wasn’t your fault at all, but you won’t find any of this out for ninety two more minutes at which point you are done with your meeting and you pull out your phone, fire up the Tesla Network app to hail another robot car to take you back home, only to discover your negative reputation report and an error message saying “we’re sorry, but you have been temporarily banned from riding in the Tesla Network” and a line below it saying “Reason:” and then some lowercase text saying “left car dirty with beer bottles, fast food trash, and a used diaper.”
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.
