Commentary
Personal Vehicle Ownership 'Extremely Important' To Consumers
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, March 9, 2020
Self-driving cars may not soon find a home in consumers' garages.
The expected high price of fully autonomous vehicles makes them much more likely candidates for ride-sharing services or product deliveries.
In addition, a new study indicates that owning or leasing a personal vehicle still matters to drivers.
Most (94%) boomers, those aged 56 to 73, Gen-x (86%) those 40 to 55 and 87% of millennials, those 23 to 39, say vehicle ownership or leasing is important to them, with the majority of all ages ranking it as “extremely important.”
The view of when self-driving vehicles will arrive also varies, based on the survey of 950 consumers conducted by Cars.com.
Most boomers (69%), 64% of those in gen x and 54% of millennials say they expect fully self-driving cars to become available in the next 10 years.
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“Millennials had high expectations for a futuristic automotive experience by the year 2020,” states Matt Schmitz, Cars.com assistant managing editor. “But our research found that while the industry hasn’t advanced as quickly as they envisioned, millennials’ attitude toward automotive is extremely positive and they are the most excited among their generational counterparts to shop for their next vehicle.”
In addition to self-driving cars, 18% of adults 40 to 73 years old and 14% of millennials expect flying cars to become widely available in the next 10 years.
Another reason drivers may not feel compelled to give up their cars is that the majority consumers of all ages describes their attitude toward automotive in general as “happy.”
Drivers happy with owning and driving their own cars is hardly a fertile environment for marketing fully autonomous vehicles.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
Economics drive change. Statistics will show, relatively soon, that self driving cars are considerably more safe than human piloted vehicles. Once this occurs, insurance companies will adapt and charge less for autonomous vehicles and more and more for old fashioned driving. The cost of insurance will skyrocket and the writing will be on the wall.
Jeffrey, I think you are 110% wrong in this area. I think the insurance will sky-rocket because of unknown liability . Example I have a self driving car, it's involved in an accident, a fatality occurs. I testify, "Your honor, i wasn't driving the car." then we go to GM (or whoever built it) and pressure them. They say, "it wasn't our car but the 'brain' ". Then the tech company says , "No , it was the sensor", the sensor folks say , "No, it was the GPS/Radar" and then they all try to blame eachother, meanwhile the car owner sues all of them. This will be a cluster nightmare and it won't take too many of these accounts for the public to say, I want no part of Ghost-driver cars piloted by platic circuit boards made in China. 3 plus years, I have been saying, "Dumbest idea of the 21st Century"
No doubt insurance issues will play a role here, but even the ethics of the programming of the "decision-making" of the vehicle have to be tackled.