The self-driving car generation gap.

 

"While there are obviously individual exceptions, the trends are pretty clear: For older folks, automobiles were, and are, the technology of freedom; you’ll get them into autonomous vehicles when you can peel the stick shift out of their cold, dead fingers. For younger people, automobiles, especially in cities, are becoming an unnecessary complication to their busy lives—a car detracts, rather than augments, their freedom and mobility. Rather, it is their smartphone that gives them access to the world and that they perceive gives them freedom. To punish a teenager in the 1960s, you took away the cars keys; to punish a teenager today, you have to take away the smartphone. In some ways, today’s millennials are simply, finally, achieving what the Apple advertisement promised so long ago.

 Millennials as a market segment are likely to be far more amenable to nonownership or shared ownership because they don’t have the same psychological attachment to the car as integral to one’s sense of personal freedom that many older consumers have. And, if you really want to rock autonomous vehicles, advertise them as offering millennials the ability to cruise cyberspace while going somewhere in their cute little on-demand, environmentally friendly, broadband-enabled, autonomous urban runabouts."
read article by Brad Allenby

The self-driving car generation gap.: