What Customers Want From Driverless Cars

Exciting news!

"From Germany recently came word of a spectacular and amazing development in the field of aeronautics—a flivver plane that is at the same time an automobile; a machine only 18 feet long and less than six feet wide when the wings are folded back, small enough to be housed in the ordinary one-car garage!"

...from the March 1926 edition of Popular Science.

People have been interested in flying cars for nearly a hundred years now. But flight marks just one innovation in the automotive industry that's perpetually upcoming... what others are there, and are they in reach? Revolutions in clean fuel (admittedly less appealing to sci-fi directors) are underway, and also near on the horizon are fully self-driving cars. Beyond decisions like which FinTech interview you should read while your car drives you to your next meeting, what will driverless cars mean in terms of business models and selling criteria for customers?

Our Global Automotive Executive Survey 2017 looks at exactly these questions. With nearly 1,000 respondents from automotive companies around the planet, we've brought you the top trends in the car business both now and (pardon the expression) down the road. Download the entire survey via the previous link, or read on for key headlights and driveaways (sorry again).

Just a few more miles before combustion goes digital

Before we get to the more fun discussion of future and futuristic cars, we must take stock of where manufacturers, technology, and customers are as of early 2017. Alternatives to petrol are still being sought as ways to be more environmentally responsible and to overtake (sorry, it keeps happening) geopolitical quagmires, and 78% of our respondents see fuel cells as the next breakthrough in this area. However, fuel cells are not quite a reality yet—instead, battery-powered vehicles are the number one trend of 2017, up from number three last year and number nine the year before. As the following chart shows, fuel cells are, technologically, only at the testing phase and are not yet properly in the minds of consumers—but they will be something to very much keep in mind for the coming years.

Despite the buzz around fuel cells, petrol is still driving us forward (honestly, I'm really sorry): three in four of our respondents agreed that internal combustion engines will be more important than electric cars "for a very long time." How should this statement be interpreted with consideration for the mindsets of...