In the race to deliver driverless cars, it has long since been a war of attrition between the tech vendors and the automotive manufacturers. According to a new study, UK drivers see the benefits of both – yet it’s bad news for taxi companies.
The research, which surveyed 1,000 people across the UK, saw Hyundai, polled by 46.7% of respondents, take arguably a surprising win when it came to the must trusted brand across all sectors. Apple, cited by 31.3% of those polled, secured second place while Tesla (26.6%) took the bronze medal.
When it came to what the research termed as luxury brands, there was a wide range of results. Audi, cited by almost a quarter (22.4%) of those polled, fared well, with Mercedes-Benz (17.9%) and BMW (16.6%) trailing off somewhat. For Jaguar Land Rover, it was a double whammy. Both brands rated poorly, with Land Rover (9.6%) edging Jaguar (6.9%).
This may come as something of a surprise to regular readers of this publication given Jaguar Land Rover’s various bets in the space. As far back as June 2017, the company was investing the better part of £20 million into ridesharing firm Lyft, while recent technological efforts have included vehicle to infrastructure (V2X) software aiming to prevent cars from becoming stuck at traffic lights.
The second division ‘executive’ brands saw Volvo – cited by 22.6% of respondents – and Volkswagen (22.4%) virtually level pegging, before a gap to Ford (15.3%), Toyota (13.2%), Nissan (11.6%), and Honda (10.8%). Renault, meanwhile, bottomed out with only a 4.1% approval rate – the lowest in the entire survey. The top two have been focusing a lot of their efforts on creating an industry-focused ‘automotive cloud’ – Volkswagen with Microsoft in October and Volvo with Ericsson in December – while Volkswagen has also been working recently with Ford for cross-collaboration.
Hyundai naturally topped the budget brand ranking by a considerable margin, ahead of Peugeot (20.9%), Chrysler (17.6%) and Citroen (14.8%). At the start of last year, the South Korean manufacturer announced it was pumping $21 billion into connected cars. For tech companies, Apple led the list ahead of Google, cited by a quarter (25.4%) of those polled, Samsung (16.2%), Amazon (15.6%) and Microsoft (11.5%).
Looking at the investment stats, Volkswagen, with an estimated $54.2 billion bet on connected car technologies, was the clear leader. The majority of this estimate came from a bullish November announcement around a $50bn electrification plan. The company said it expected to become the most profitable manufacturer of electric cars in the process.
62% of those polled said they would trust a driverless car made by an automotive manufacturer, while 31% said they trusted tech companies the most. Only 6% of respondents said they would trust taxi companies in the same regard.
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