User awareness and demand are important prerequisites for deployment of iMobility technologies, which improve safety and reduce the energy consumption and emissions of road traffic. Over the past few months we have collected responses to our survey exploring awareness and demand of the following systems: eco-driving assistance, emergency braking, speed alert, real-time travel and traffic information (RTTI), and start-stop assistance. The large-scale data collection (over a thousand respondents per country) was conducted in five member states: Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands and Spain.

The users were asked whether they had heard about the systems covered by the study or whether they had used the systems themselves. The share of respondents which had either heard or read about the systems ranged from 59% for eco-driving assistance to 69% in case of start-stop assistance. This indicates a moderate level of user awareness in Europe for the systems covered by the study. There still is however a need to provide information on the use, functionalities and benefits of the systems covered by the study.

The share of respondents which had actually used the systems was between 5% (emergency braking) and 19% (eco-driving assistance and start-stop assistance). This was clearly less than the share of users which were aware of them in some way or another (59-69%) and indicates that we are still a long way from widespread deployment of the systems.

The study also explored the car buying preferences of respondents. They were asked to select three features they considered most important when buying a new car. The two most frequently selected features were the safety of the vehicle and its fuel consumption. After these came the running cost of the vehicle, engine power, comfort and size of the vehicle. This suggests that potential buyers of new cars are very interested in both safety and fuel consumption.

The full results of the study will be reported as a research report on the iMobility Challenge website end of april, as well as infographics summarising the key survey results.  http://www.imobilitychallenge.eu.