What if the People Don’t Want Autonomous Cars?
Lots of unknowns here. Autonomous means driver optional or no driver ever? Who is responsible in the event of an accident? Illegal lane change? Speeding due to some glitch? Affordable or not so much?
Sure, some people may say that dialing their destination into their cars and then going to sleep/screwing around on Facebook/cracking open a 12-pack of Lone Star is something they want. But when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are, will buyers really invest in fully autonomous cars?
A story in Bloomberg adamantly argues that the people do not want self-driving cars, and many of them do not even want an autonomous mode, like Tesla’s Autopilot:
Recent surveys by J.D. Power, consulting company EY, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Canadian Automobile Association, researcher Kelley Blue Book and auto supplier Robert Bosch LLC all show that half to three-quarters of respondents don’t want anything to do with these models.
“Technologically, we will be ready for automated driving within this decade,” said Kay Stepper, a vice president and head of the automated driving unit at Bosch, which supplies components to the world’s leading manufacturers. “But it will take well into the next decade to convince consumers.”