Americans Warm to Self-Driving Cars

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Americans Warm to Self-Driving Cars

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One thing that companies developing self-driving, or autonomous, cars face is that Americans love the experience of driving themselves. Why buy a car you love and let it be driven by someone or something else? The self-driving car industry got some good news. A relatively large portion of Americans would give up the steering wheel and accelerator. On the other hand, people still are anxious about safety.

According to ReportLinker Insights:

  1. More than 60% of surveyed Americans say they are somewhat or very positive about autonomous cars.
  2. A large majority of Americans are passionate for automobiles and driving. They may not be ready to shift to a new driving paradigm as quickly.
  3. Safety is a significant concern. A majority – 63% – of consumers say they won’t feel safe in a fully-automated vehicle.
  4. Use of automated features on traditional cars could help to overcome the fear. But ride-sharing services offer also another way to experience AVs.

a. 54% of potential users of self-driving taxis say they would purchase an AV, compared to 41% of non-users.

b. Younger Millennials may pave the way for future growth of AVs as they express more interest in using driverless taxis or buses than older generations.

Bottom line: The crashes of Tesla and Google cars have been well publicized, and that will be hard to overcome. How can some of the most technologically proficient companies in the world have accident prevention problems? As long as these dangerous problems are on the front pages, the 63% may well grow.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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