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posted by martyb on Friday May 12 2017, @06:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the insurance-deduction dept.

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=175144&CultureCode=en

The average consumer would be willing to pay $4,900 more for a car that had self-driving technologies, and $3,500 more for crash avoidance, according to a new study published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.

The researchers, from Cornell University in the US, also found a big difference in what people would be willing to pay: some would stretch to more than $10,000 for automation, while others would pay nothing at all. Car manufacturers should consider this as technologies develop and give people flexible options.

Today it's possible to buy a car that can park itself, stay in lane and maintain a constant speed. The technology is developing fast and many companies are already testing self-driving cars; it's likely we will soon see fully automated cars on the market. But will people be willing to pay for this technology and how can manufacturers and policy makers make sure it is rolled out to our roads smoothly? This is what Dr. Ricardo Daziano and his colleagues wanted to find out.

Are consumers willing to pay to let cars drive for them? Analyzing response to autonomous vehicles (DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2017.03.003) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 12 2017, @03:09PM (1 child)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday May 12 2017, @03:09PM (#508647) Journal

    Yet there is a middle ground, shockingly, a whole segment of consumers who don't count since they never buy vehicles. These are what we call the working poor, and they pay rent in the form of bus fare.

    Actually, that's not the "middle ground." The "middle ground" is the large segment of the population who is actually looking for cars that cost less than $30k. If these people didn't exist, there likely wouldn't be such a market for used cars. The average used car price in the U.S. is around $15000, and while it seems weirdly difficult to find the data on this, it seems that used car sales in the U.S. are likely about twice as many as new car sales. It's also difficult to tell whether the $15000 quoted as "average" is meant to be mean or median. I think it's likely mean, in which case, it's quite likely that this number is skewed up by more expensive used cars (e.g., "certified" fancy cars coming off leases and such), and the majority of the used market is a lot lower than $15000.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @04:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @04:00PM (#508671)

    I make $85k, spent $4.5k on my last car (though it was listed at $6.5k, my dealer/uncle helped me out).