While a recent survey shows most drivers are growing increasingly wary of driverless cars, a new survey has now shed light on how much consumers would be willing to pay to have their vehicle chauffeur them about.
According to a new study from Fortune — which was actually sampled three years ago –, the average driver is willing to shell out $4,900 for full autonomous car technology. $3,500 was the sweet spot for partial autonomous driving features. However, the results showed major variations among the sample size.
Of the 1,260 adults with a driver’s license, a “significant share” of the sample reported a willingness to spend to pay more than $10,000 for fully autonomous technology. On the other end, another share has zero interest in self-driving cars, unwilling to pay anything extra at all.
As stated, the survey was conducted in three years ago in 2014, so it would be interesting to see if opinions have swayed, considering the advancements in the technology. However, as older and younger generations grow skeptical of driverless cars, companies may have a lot of negative perceptions to fix before tacking on significant premiums for the technology.
Comments
I would not even pay $49.00 more for a autonomous car. How will they ever handle ice, hydroplaning or pot hole the size of your car?
I would pay for an autonomous vehicles. The A.I. (artificial intelligence) can learn new techniques as humans do, and become more expert since they don’t suffer from memory losses due to aging or driving while intoxicated. The best features will be use for self parking and retrieval.
Your car already does handle ice and hydroplaning without you even knowing it or even acting on it. GM has had Stablitrac for years, and other automakers have had similar technology. Such control technologies can already respond and act far faster than any human ever could.
As for potholes, it takes only one autonomous car to record, document, navigate, and share the location data of the hole. From that, it can inform hundreds of thousands of other cars in a system of where the hole is. As other autonomous cars pass it, the hole appears as datum point that is observed and any changes are documented (a more accurate location of the hole via GPS, size of the hole, if the hole is spreading, etc). The cars could inform via email whoever the responsible parties are to have it patched, and would continue to monitor the hole with each pass until it is. When patched, all it takes is one autonomous car to record, document, navigate, and share the location data of the newly patched hole with every other car in the system.
Bluntly, it’s described as machine learning, and it means that an autonomous car wouldn’t be acting alone as it drives. It would have the knowledge of the location of thousands of potholes without ever having driven down the road to find it. Humans don’t have that ability to remember that much data, or share it as easily with others.
Federal and State regulation as well as insurance companies will still have to approve operating such autonomous vehicles. This could take many years, since being cautious on approval will still be part of the next several steps toward full approval. In the meantime, any meaningful autonomous safety features should sell very well.
i’d like to know the results if the question was “would you buy a car w/o autonomous driving if it saved you $5000”.
5,000 seems about righ!
Here is the problem with Autonomous cars.
The truth is most of the car we will see will just be driver assist as they really will not drive themselves much of the time and even then the driver needs to be engaged. Many people expect the car will do it all.
There will be cars that can do it all but they will be used in limited area and in limited ways. Why because they can not deal with people.
While automakers talk of a automated future computer people are still dealing with variables they can not control and situation they have yet to figure out for full automation.
Case in point. Human Factors can over rule these cars. One example given is these cars will drive at the speed limit programmed into the car. Now imagine pulling onto the I5 in So Cal at 6 PM and trying to get on the freeway doing the speed limit. You will be killed.
Same for like moving to a turn lane. The car will follow the line how ever the highway department painted them. But many people drive over the lines daily and will pass up cars waiting to get to where the line moves over.
Then you have the regional factors as in some parts of the country they have habits not like other places. Pittsburgh for example drivers will let every other car make a left turn in traffic as they also do in Boston. But in most other places they do not do that and you would be struck.
Then you have the Human Stupidity factor that people know that autonomous cars will do things if you swerve at them or just cut them off. Some people in Tesla’s are finding people cutting them off as they know that they will auto brake. Other aspects of road rage will also play into this.
Then you have ever changing road conditions that many cars will not be able to read. That hole that is filled with water or snow will not be avoided by the car and that 22″ wheel is toast. Water on the road is deep enough that the stability control is over ruled.
Many of these issues can be programmed but it will take a lot more time according to the programmers. Also it will take even large and more expensive computers to reach that Utopia that some of the people who hate to drive dream of. One said the computers would take about $100K right now. He did say over time they would grow cheaper but it would take a while.
Finally the legal factor is in play. There will still be accidents as they will happen. Then who is to blame? The owner? the driver who is more a passenger? The MFG, Who? Could it be the programmer? The tech who did not update the car? The sensor maker who had a failure?
This is not like planes where you are working miles between them these are cars with often inches between them moving head on.
I expect taxis in limited areas and trucks on limited highways will be the first we see with no drivers but for now it will just be drive assist and even then they will have to have a camera on you to make sure you are not sleeping, reading a book or texting. If that is the case you may as well hang onto the wheel.
I already see drunks and stoners getting behind the wheel and getting away with it till something goes wrong. Then it is just a matter of who else they take with them.
This gloom and doom thought process is ridiculous, this reminds me of how the pilots reacted when airplanes started to put autopilot systems in commercial aircraft .
They said the same thing about pilots would forget how to fly, airplanes will take over and have a mind of their own, planes were going to be hitting each other when the systems malfunction.
In fact none of this happened, pilots learned how to use the systems, planes became safer, pilots became better because they were fresher when it mattered the most, landing and takeoffs!
Flying is now the safest mode of travel and the cheapest when you consider how long it takes you to get to your destination.
In the future cars will help us keep the car on the road, keep us from driving faster then we should be, and help make the best driving decisions.
And for the people that say I miss driving well there will be race tracks that you can go to when you want to push the limits of your car!
Look I drive like a maniac, I enjoy driving as much as the next guy. I have no problem handling any type of car in any situation.
If it helps get a drunk home safely is that really a bad thing? If it helps a bad driver be a good driver is that a bad thing?
People get over yourself and look at the big picture, if I can I am sure that you can! This is not about you it’s about the rest of the people who drive cars.