I actually wonder if “tip the development team” makes sense (assuming tipping is gratuity and not because an employer pays below-living wages). Weirdly it might even lead to quality improvement because low tip areas could be detected and debugged.
They won't be tips as such, but the average amount of the tip will be baked into the price.
If people are willing to pay base charge + tip for an Uber, then that is what robo-taxies will charge too. Especially if one company is allowed to keep a monopoly on the technology.
There will be bullshit booking charges etc though. The thrust of their point is largely correct. I really wish people were more sensitive to being stiffed like we are by these sorts of stupid charges … that they arent means there is often no alternative.
I'll take bullshit charges that I can know about upfront over being nagged for tips every day.
The point of bullshit charges is often to obscure total cost upfront. We are absolutely rotten with them in the UK. Not sure the US is better but I think they are really anticompetitive because they create a cost to discovering the true cost of goods. I have a personal policy of not buying if I discover stupid charges at the end of a sales pipeline but it’s sometimes incredibly inconvenient.