Fun to ride... not drive

Convincingly changing the automotive sales message from the traditional 'fun to drive' to 'fun to ride' will be a key for car brands looking to successfully exploit the arrival of autonomous cars, says a senior industry analyst.

Daimler and Nissan are among the global car manufacturers who are promising to have self-driving autonomous cars on-sale in 2020, with many others planning to quickly follow suit.

Newcomers such as web-search giant Google have also announced their intention to retail autonomous cars within years.

"Part of the value proposition of a lot of the car manufacturers is they are fun to drive, but if we shift to an autonomous car we start shifting the value proposition that it is not fun to drive any more, it is fun to ride," said Kevin J. Lindemer, managing director downstream consulting at IHS Automotive.

"That is going to be a very big challenge for the industry – to convince people who like driving as an active experience that the passive experience is just as valued."

Lindemer was speaking in Chengdu, China at the 12th edition of the Michelin Bibendum Challenge, a think-tank, seminar and motor show devoted to future transport technologies and sustainable mobility.

Lindemer and his IHS colleagues, speaking at a seminar on personal and sustainable mobility, made it clear they expect the riding experience in autonomous cars to be as distinct between different brands as it is between driving them now.

Cars could still have multiple driving modes such as sport, normal and eco delivered by software tuning. Connectivity would also play significant role in making the 'fun to ride' label stick.

"The question is what do you need to do to differentiate yourself – your product, your autonomous car – from the other guys' autonomous car," Lindemer said.

He conceded there were some enthusiast drivers who would never be convinced of the benefits of relinquishing control of the vehicle no matter what the selling pitch, but countered that autonomy might attract non-enthusiasts such as younger generations in western markets.

"I think you are going to have these segments of customers where you are not going to convince a lifelong member of the Jaguar club that he really needs an autonomous car," he said.

"But if you do come up with a value proposition for consumers that says it is more fun to ride than it is to drive then that might speak to a different generation than we are from. It might speak to our kids' generation, who aren't getting drivers licences."

He also argued that autonomous cars might have the unintended negative impact of adding to road use by attracting users of public transport back on to the road.

"Commuting is a chore. It is a waste of time, but if I have an autonomous car, suddenly the value of that commute increases. And the time I spend in my car I can be more productive," he argued.

"Does an autonomous car make you want to get into a car more often? And does an autonomous car make it so you don't want to take mass transit and you would rather be in your car by yourself going down the road and being productive?

"So there is a question; we interchange the customer value proposition from fun to drive to fun to ride, and is the unintended consequence of this going to be more commuting rather than less commuting?"

If so, he suggests that the mix between autonomous and driver-controlled vehicles on the roads could be messy – at least for a while.

"How then do you integrate an autonomous vehicle into a traffic stream where you have the fun to drive crowd and the fun to ride crowd?" he asked. "Does mixing the two create an inefficiency or disgruntlement that results in having to change something to accommodate one versus the other?"

And if the autonomous car does emerge dominant, it will pose some challenges for us.

"If everyone drove an autonomous car there would be no reason to have safety equipment on it, because they can go faster much closer together and they won't have an accident.

"So you don't need airbags or crash frames or anything like that and you can make the car very light and it becomes very efficient.

"But then the question is 'would you want to get into an autonomous car that wasn't fully equipped from a safety perspective?'"