A recent study asked car shoppers which brand they trusted to build an autonomous car.
Whether you like it or not, we’re still likely several years off from fully autonomous cars. Companies like Uber and Waymo have experienced their own setbacks in recent months. Legislators continue to grapple with the issue, trying to figure out how fully-autonomous cars should be regulated. Each year, Autolist conducts a survey into which companies people trust to build an autonomous car.
The survey covered 1,650 current car shoppers in April 2019. In it, Autolist gauged the impressions of which companies — if any — showed the best leadership in their autonomous driving systems.
Perhaps not surprisingly, most people chose Tesla as the brand they trust the most. 24 percent chose the all-electric automaker, and it’s easy to understand why. The company has pushed its Autopilot hard, and continues to refine the system through hardware and software updates.
While that figure is the most significant here, it was down from the 2018 survey, which pegged Tesla at 32 percent. A good portion of people, however, don’t trust any company to bring a self-driving vehicle to market. 22 percent of respondents made their mistrust clear, though that also dropped from 27 percent in 2018.
Toyota was the most trusted “legacy” brand
18 percent of respondents say they trusted Toyota to bring a self-driving car to market, up from 15 percent last year. General Motors say the largest increase, moving to 15 percent from 9 percent in 2018. That improvement comes on the back of Cadillac’s Super Cruise system.
Uber earned the trust of 6 percent of respondents, up from 5 percent. That slight bump comes in the wake of major setbacks, including a fatal accident in Arizona last year. Volkswagen Group, Lyft, Waymo and other companies fell on the lower end of the survey, each earning less than 5 percent of buyers’ confidence.
