CarGurus discovered consumers are becoming more interested in autonomous vehicles (AVs), but the majority still isn’t ready to take its foot off the gas and hands off the wheel completely

On Thursday, site officials released details of the CarGurus Self-Driving Vehicle Sentiment Survey that compiled and analyzed consumer feedback on AV-related topics such as comfort with self-driving, how people imagine utilizing the technology and timeline to adoption.

CarGurus indicated that the study has shown that over the past two years, familiarity with AVs has grown while excitement has remained stagnant.

When asked how comfortable they were with the advancement of self-driving technology, the survey showed 37% of respondents were neutral and 33% expressed excitement. Whereas in 2019, CarGurus indicated 31% of consumers were neutral and 32% excited.

According to the study, it appears that respondents still want to maintain control of a vehicle with 53% of respondents preferring to remain the driver of a self-driving car. Results showed survey participants are least comfortable (20%) sharing the roads with self-driving delivery trucks or fleets, which is a major use case in which the technology is being deployed.

As with electric vehicles, CarGurus reported that respondents chose Tesla (34%) as the most trusted brand to work on self-driving vehicles, followed by Apple (8%) and Toyota (7%).

However, nearly two in 10 respondents do not trust any brand to do so, according to the study, and CarGurus said with 56% wanting brands to bear the responsibility in the case of any accidents, there is a long way to go to earn consumers’ trust

The study also mentioned Tesla is also the top AV brand that shoppers would consider with 54%, followed by Toyota (35%) and BMW (32%).

Despite some apprehension around self-driving vehicles, CarGurus pointed out that consumers still have high hopes for their capabilities.

More than half (56%) of respondents would use AVs to drive them home safely when unable to do so themselves and 42% would want their AV to be able to park itself.

Despite these metrics, CarGurus determined consumers expressed the most interest in advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) like back-up cameras (39%) and blind-spot monitoring (56%), features that many cars already have (42% and 17% of drivers respectively report already owning them).

“This year’s Self-Driving Vehicle Sentiment Survey from CarGurus makes clear that autonomous vehicles’ tech offerings need to align with how people want to use them,” CarGurus director of customer insights Madison Gross said in a news release.

“While there is hesitancy around self-driving technology, how consumers envision themselves using the technology would require full autonomy — which is still a goal that the industry is striving toward,” Gross continued. “Until then, shoppers are looking for driving technology that helps them stay in control, rather than technology that takes total control.”

Additionally, the study covered:

• Timeline to adoption, with 34% of consumers saying they will be likely to own an autonomous vehicle in the 10 years.

• Which aspects of autonomous vehicles excite consumers, like being a huge leap in technology (45%), and which concern them, like safety (51%) and cost (45%).

The full results of the study can be found on this website.