Skip to main content

Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz vehicle owners want self-driving cars

Overall, consumers are still not interested in self-driving cars, but owners of two luxury brands are more in favor of the technology than others. Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz owners took a recent “Interest in Robot Rides” survey by customer experience software and research company MaritzCXaccording to Bloomberg.

Surveying 12,353 vehicle owners from May through August 2016, MaritzCX reports that while 94 percent are aware of autonomous cars and know that they’re coming, close to 48 percent are not interested at all. Indeed, among the Infiniti and Mercedes owners, those most interested were still in the minority. For each brand, approximately 27 percent responded that they were “very interested” in buying a fully autonomous car when they are available.

Recommended Videos

Related: Most consumers OK with giving up boring driving chores but want the fun parts

At the other end of the scale, owners of two Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV brands were the least interested in robot cars. Just 6 percent of Ram pickup truck and 8 percent of Jeep owners were very interested in the coming technology.

“The luxury vehicle owners are more willing to accept this technology because they believe safety would be much better in these types of vehicles,” said MaritzCX’s Shawn St. Clair, the author of the survey. “If you’re interested in doing some off-roading in a Jeep or a Ram, you’re not interested in an autonomous vehicle.”

The survey didn’t just ask about interest in eventual autonomous car ownership. It also explored vehicle owners’ reasons behind their level of interest. The top concerns about fully autonomous vehicles were equipment failure and the robot cars get confused and disoriented in traffic. Owners also expressed concern about navigating around pedestrians and bicycles, legal liability, and vehicle hacking.

Luxury brands across the board weren’t represented among those most interested. Porsche and BMW owners were near the bottom of the ranking. St. Clair’s explanation: “There is a set of luxury owners who want a performance vehicle that goes from zero to 60 miles per hour in three seconds. Those people are not in a big rush to give over control, if ever.”

Bruce Brown
Bruce Brown Contributing Editor   As a Contributing Editor to the Auto teams at Digital Trends and TheManual.com, Bruce…
2022 Mercedes-Benz EQB first drive review: An EV better than its gas sibling
Front three quarter view of the 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQB.

Mercedes-Benz aims to go all-electric in at least some markets by 2030 but to do that it will need to launch electric equivalents of each of its many gasoline-powered models. The 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQB fits that description to the letter.

Where the EQS sedan aims to fill a similar role to the S-Class without directly copying it, the EQB is literally an electric version of an existing Mercedes crossover SUV — the GLB-Class. It uses the same body shell as the GLB, even retaining that model’s optional third-row seats.

Read more
Officers confused as they pull over an empty self-driving car
Cruise

In what appears to be the first incident of its kind, police officers recently pulled over a self-driving car with no one inside it.

The incident, which took place on a street in San Francisco earlier this month, was caught on video by a passing pedestrian. It shows several traffic cops pondering about how to handle the incident after stopping the vehicle for failing to have its front lights on while driving at night.

Read more
How a big blue van from 1986 paved the way for self-driving cars
Lineup of all 5 Navlab autonomous vehicles.

In 1986, a blue Chevy van often cruised around the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania near Carnegie Mellon University. To the casual observer, nothing about it appeared out of the ordinary. Most people would pass by it without noticing the camcorder peeking out from its roof, or the fact that there were no hands on the steering wheel.

But if any passerby had stopped to inspect the van and peer into its interior, they would have realized it was no ordinary car. This was the world's first self-driving automobile: A pioneering work of computer science and engineering somehow built in a world where fax machines were still the predominant way to send documents, and most phones still had cords. But despite being stuck in an era where technology hadn't caught up to humanity's imagination quite yet, the van -- and the researchers crammed into it -- helped to lay the groundwork for all the Teslas, Waymos, and self-driving Uber prototypes cruising around our streets in 2022.

Read more