Half of Car Buyers Pick Tech Ahead of Brand

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 4:03PM EST · Published Jan 9, 6:15AM EST

[cnxvideo id=”655426″ placement=”ros”]Car technology, once considered a nuisance by many drivers, has apparently come of age. A new study shows that 48% of car buyers put the latest auto technology offerings ahead of brand, style or color.

The study, done by Cox Automotive, showed:

A growing number of car shoppers believe certain safety technologies, including blind-spot detection and forward collision warning, should be standard on all vehicles sold in the U.S., according to the findings of the 2017 Autotrader Car Technology Impact Study, released today. In its third year, the latest study reveals insight into how vehicle technology impacts consumer vehicle purchase behavior.

Another finding is that two-thirds of people would pay extra for the tech features they want.

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Drivers had strong preferences for wireless device charging, advanced camera parking display and automatic parking.

Drivers also believe that a number of features should be standard rather than ones that buyers should pay for. Among them are blind spot detection, forward collision warnings and forward collision avoidance.

Coming full circle to the issue of nuisance, 67% of people said it would take over a half an hour to how to figure out the tech features of their next car.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.