>Why anyone would own one ?

Cleanliness, customization, storing of personal items, availability at odd timings or locations. There are plenty of reasons why many will still own a car.

Cleanliness is completely subjective. I know many people with cars so cluttered it's absurd. I've also been in many shared vehicles that are utterly spotless.

There are many reasons why you'd want to own a car, but the number of reasons for you to need to own a car plunges dramatically when the quality offered by shared rides meets or exceeds the experience your average car-owner has.

Imagine a car that always has sufficient fuel or battery power to get you where you're going, that is clean every time you use it, that never has to be parked, that comes reliably within minutes of being summoned, and never, ever has to be taken in to the garage to be fixed.

That's the future if things come together as they should.

Rich people will own their own cars, probably several of them, but your average person won't see the need. If they want to splurge they'll rent a car solo. If they want to save money, ride-share with a few others.

I know me and a lot of other parents with young kids probably wouldn't go with this. Our cars are stocked with a diaper bag, stroller, some books, a few car-friendly toys and a stroller. If I had to haul all that in the house everyday, it'd be a pain in the ass. If the car never 'parked', that'd be a pain in the ass because I'd be hauling it into wherever we'd go...if I was shopping I'd need a shopping cart just for that stuff. Then when our 2nd kid comes around and I have to work but my tiny wife had to haul our two boys around, there's no way that'd be possible.

Autonomous cars may be the future, but it'll be decades before not owning a car really takes off. Maybe for single people or couples without kids it will be possible, or those times you don't have the kids, but for the rest of us it's just not feasible.

There are parents that don't own cars. Shocker, I'm sure, for some families. They get by with things like strollers, or child-carrying bicycles with ample storage space.

The amount of junk you carry seems to scale in proportion to the convenient carrying capacity of your transportation. If you have a huge SUV of course it will be packed with all kinds of stuff. If all you have is a stroller you'll scale back accordingly.

"There's no way that'd be possible" is utter defeatism. Somehow as a species we survived for tens of thousands of years before cars. I doubt autonomous cars won't be embraced by millions just because you personally find them inconvenient.

So how to ensure that the autonomous vehicle isn't full of fast food containers and used condoms when picking up a new customer?

This isn't a difficult problem. You give your car-calling app a "reject" button, which will send the car back to a central location for cleaning, and send you a new car.

Yes, and before the cleaner starts, a picture is taken, that generates a $100 charge to the previous customer for every separate bit of garbage.

A slightly customer-friendlier option would be to take the picture every time the car is vacated, and then clean (and charge) when the detritus reaches a certain level. After all it wouldn't be right to penalize people who are simply in too much of a hurry to care about previous travelers' candy wrappers.

Same way potato chip factories can sort out bad chips faster than the eyes can see: machine vision. A couple of cameras inside the car can take a picture, compare to a sample of a clean car and identify extraneous objects. Smell can be automatically checked as well.

A combination of computer vision, periodic inspections, feedback from customers, plus stiff penalties for abusing the vehicles would be one way.

If the vehicle is detected as being "messy" it can swing back to the depot for a cleaning or have someone dispatched to clear it out.

Yes, but those many will be much less than they are now. I believe we'll own a car only if and when we can't avoid it (having babies to carry around could be a reason for many of us) or if we want to brag about our money.

I don't own a car since 2012 because I was not using it enough. I'm using car sharing now and a little more trains. It's much less expensive, maybe a little more time consuming, but that time is gained because I have less things to care about. Cars became a commodity for me, and I see no reasons why they shouldn't be. All I ask from them is be safe.

Taking things places, like bikes, surfboards etc.