OREANDA-NEWS. October 15, 2015. A new Ford study of the mobility preferences of millennials in Germany shows that growing numbers are in favour of car sharing as an alternative to car ownership.

Ford’s Automotive Zeitgeist 3.0 survey also reveals that four-in-ten millennials would be willing to share their car occasionally and that two thirds aren’t convinced self-driving cars will make travel safer and less stressful.

Ford commissioned the renowned Zukunftsinstitut in Frankfurt to help carry out this latest trend study*.  In all, 2,000 adults were questioned, including around 1,000 millennials.

The results show that among millennials:

  • 73 per cent own a car or have regular access to a car
  • 68 per cent are aware of car sharing offers where people rent and return cars at set locations, such as Ford Carsharing
  • 62 per cent believe that "sharing rather than owning" could function as an everyday principle for ride sharing
  • 43 per cent would be willing to share their car with others at least occasionally
  • 28 per cent feel that being mobile is a basic social and professional need
  • 22 per cent would be willing to share their car at all times

When it comes to what cars need to offer in order make urban transport less stressful, an air-conditioning system is top priority at 73 per cent, followed by navigation system 62 per cent.

Only a third of millennials questioned thought it was ideal for cars to be adaptive to short, constant, repeating stretches of road and to control themselves independently upon request on such stretches (34 per cent). Just 31 per cent of millennials are convinced that self-driving vehicles would make travel safer and less stressful.

Thirty four per cent of millennials want a car that is an expansion of their networked lives, where all their devices can be integrated easily and interact. They also want to be safer when on the road: for 66 per cent of millennials, protection of data and privacy in the technical systems of a car is very important.

If millennials had five wishes from the ‘mobility fairy’ today, smarter traffic lights (67 per cent) would be number one. Second favourite would be free charging stations for e-cars (55 per cent), followed by automated park space search functionality (51 per cent), and real time automatic traffic control (47 per cent). Fifth on the list is a mobility system that enables fast and seamless mobility with different means of transport (43 per cent).

*Ford-Werke GmbH commissioned the Zukunftsinstitut to find out how millennials currently deal with the topic of mobility and community and which needs and wishes as well as expectations and demands they see in the future of mobility and cars. 2,000 people in Germany were asked questions in a representative online survey by the YouGov market research institute between 21 and 31 August 2015. The sample group consisted of 979 millennials aged from 18 to 34 years, 509 participants aged from 35 to 54 years, and 512 participants aged 55 or older.