Paving the way for trust in autonomous vehicles–How OEMs, authorities and certifiers can foster customers’ trust in AVs

Trust will be a decisive factor for customer acceptance of autonomous vehicles (AVs)—but how can it be built? Our research project provides initial answers to this question. We identify mechanisms that AV providers, authorities and certifiers could use to build trust and test them with German, Chinese and U.S. car drivers. Our comparison shows that German and U.S. customers have similar preferences for trust-building mechanisms, but the preferences of Chinese users seem to differ significantly. For example, technical protection measures seem to be far less important for the trust of Chinese users, but the protection measures of the legislators and the ratings of other users play an even greater role for trust-building. However, differences do not only emerge between the different countries; different user segments also vary in their trust preferences within the markets studied.AV providers should be aware of these different user segments when prioritizing trust measures and can, for example, develop segment-specific strategies for building trust based on typical personas.Our findings can offer points of departure for practitioners, who today already want to make informed decisions on how to build trust in AVs. We present practical examples of the measures many players are already using to build users’ trust in AVs. This article further calls OEMs, legislators and certifiers to work together to build user trust in AVs so that the benefits of autonomous mobility can become a reality.