Self-driving cars have yet to gain the confidence of the American consumer, study finds.
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To hear some pundits tell it, we’ll all be carted around in self-driving electric vehicles before we know it. Maybe not by dinner time, but certainly before the middle of the next decade. After all, we’re on the verge of 2020. The future is right in front of us. But then consumers — you know how they are — spoil the narrative.
According to the J.D. Power 2019 Mobility Confidence Index Study fueled by SurveyMonkey Audience (a mouthful in itself), “consumers lack confidence in the future of self-driving vehicles.” Interestingly to those of you who see Tesla Motors as the future personified, consumers aren’t much more enthusiastic about electric vehicles than they are about autonomous operation, despite the fact that Tesla and its conventional automaker competitors are currently spending billions developing and marketing new battery-powered EVs.
“At this point in time there is hesitation about both of these mobility options going forward,” Kristin Kolodge, executive director, Driver Interaction & Human Machine Interface Research at J.D. Power, told us in an exclusive interview. “In relation to self-driving vehicles, at this point in time consumers are highly skeptical and not necessarily on the same page as manufacturers.”
The Chevrolet Bolt EV is one of the coming wave of electric vehicles from traditional automakers.
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When the subject turns to battery electric vehicles, Kolodge said the Mobility Confidence Index indicated “a little bit more positive of a response.” But she added that the technology is really regarded as “more of a take it or leave it of position” by potential customers.
The Mobility Confidence Index is 36 for self-driving vehicles and 55 for battery-electric vehicles on a 100-point scale in which 100 represents the most positive response and zero the most negative. In the study, sentiment is segmented into three categories: low (0-40), neutral (41-60) and positive (61-100). J.D. Power and SurveyMonkey polled 5,749 consumers about self-driving vehicles and 5,270 about battery-electric vehicles for the study.
One factor that is expected to motivate a move to self-driving vehicles is the added safety they are expected to offer occupants.
“We’re still seeing a greater degree of fatalities and, looking at research, 94 percent of accidents are caused by human error,” Kolodge said. “So in theory, if you can take out a portion of that human error, that’s where a self-driving vehicle can be very beneficial.”
Waymo self-driving car performing driving tests on the street. Consumers need to experience autonomous cars before they will accept them, Kolodge said.
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Many consumers, however, harbor a great deal of concern about autonomous vehicle operation. In discussing the negative attitudes so many consumers harbor about self-driving vehicles, Kolodge noted that virtually no consumers have ever been in a self-driving car, truck, van or bus. That means there is very little real knowledge about what autonomous vehicles can provide.
“I think we’ve seen consumer skepticism about it even though in theory it should improve vehicle safety,” Kolodge said. “There is a significant portion of consumers who think that it [a self-driving car] will at best be neutral and maybe even be less safe.”
Perhaps it is logical to conclude that as consumers get experience with self-driving vehicles, they will gain more confidence in the technology. In fact, the Mobility Confidence Index was instituted to track just such a possible trajectory. In contrast to self-driving vehicles, electric vehicles are becoming common in many parts of the world, including urban areas of the United States, and thus many consumers have been able to experience an EV. But despite this, consumer enthusiasm for electric vehicles is, in the context of the study, merely neutral.
“Consumers very well understand the environmental benefits of what battery electric vehicles can bring,” J.D. Power’s Kolodge said. “But when it really comes down to is it something that they themselves want to consider as a purchase option going forward, then that’s where they turn lukewarm.”
More than half (61%) of respondents to the study said battery-electric vehicles are better for the environment, and 48% believe the cost of charging compared with the cost of gasoline will be advantageous to them personally. But consumers are also filled with skepticism about battery electric vehicles. Some 64% are concerned about the availability of public charging stations, and 59% are concerned about range.
The long-range version of the Tesla Model 3 matches the 300-mile range expectations of consumers reported by the J.D. Power Mobility Confidence Index.
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Additionally, consumers have expectations for the technology that most current EVs don’t fulfill. For example, more than three-fourths (77%) of consumers expect electric vehicles to have a driving range of 300 miles or more, something that is only the province of some Tesla models up to now. Nearly three-fourths (74%) say they are only willing to wait 30 minutes or less to charge a vehicle to travel about 200 miles, another area in which current vehicles don’t live up to expectations.
Kolodge expects that continuing consumer education and an influx of more EVs and commercially available self-driving vehicles will enable consumers to gain confidence in both self-driving and electric vehicle technologies going forward.
Clearly, consumer attitudes about these two transportation technologies lag commercial expectations of automakers, politicians, and regulators. It seems that a period of consumer education will be necessary before the future of an autonomous-operated, electrically powered transport unit becomes the norm that so many expect.
