When you come across news about the development of autonomous vehicles, what’s your first thought?  If you’re like most people, your first thought is probably a question— “Why do we need autonomous vehicles?”

Companies in that category may tell you the key benefit of their end product comes down to one word: SAFETY.  When autonomous vehicles are the norm, transportation will be much safer than it was when human-driven vehicles ruled the highways.  They are probably right.

“The United States is one of the busiest countries in terms of road traffic with nearly 284 million vehicles in operation… leading to more road accidents,” reports Statista. “In 2019, there were some 12.15 million vehicles involved in crashes in the United States, with over half that volume being passenger cars.”

Where accidents happen, death follows. National Safety Council (NSC) says cars killed 42,060 people in 2020, up from 39,107 in 2019.

So safety is important. But from a marketing standpoint, there are really only two groups with a strong interested in safety: new parents — who can’t buy enough baby monitors, nanny cams and child car seats, and seniors — who buy most home security systems.

Unfortunately, the word “safety” doesn’t grab consumer attention or build the enthusiasm needed to grow a such potentially huge category like AV.  Mention “safety,” and most of us will start checking our eyelids for leaks.

FREE TIME SELLS BETTER THAN SAFETY

But since “safety” doesn’t sell to the masses, the AV industry uses another benefit to attract interest: FREE TIME.  Everyone loves free time.

CAN’T GET ENOUGH

A 2019 Rand Corporation study found that Americans average more than five hours of free time each day, with men generally having a bit more free time than women. Yet very few people would admit to having enough free time. We always want more. We can’t get enough.

So now the AV industry wisely talks about how the time you spend driving to and from work will add to your free time. But free time to do what? A TV commercial for the new GMC Sierra (pickup truck) highlighted “Hands-Free Super Cruise Driver-Assistance Technology” by showing the driver clapping his hands to “We Will Rock You” by Queen.

As you might imagine, the typical consumer response to that ad online was a sarcastic line like: “Great, where can I sign up to pay $80k for a truck that allows me to play paddy cake?”

But don’t let GM’s third-grader approach fool you. Billions of dollars worth of new products and services have been sold using the “free time” benefit.  “Automatic washers” replaced wringer washers because it did the wash while you used your free time to do something else.  “Scientific ovens” (microwave ovens) cooked meals in a fraction of the time. Gas engine-powered lawn mowers reduce lawn cutting time by 80% over manual mowers. Snow blowers are 10 times faster than shoveling snow.

Today we have Roomba vacuum cleaners (made by iRobot) free up the time we spent running a vacuum cleaner ourselves. We Amazon Echos to save time we used to spend turning on the radio or lights. We order online so we don’t waste time driving to the store. We use the cameras in our phones to save the time we spent getting film developed.

FREE TIME RULES

“Free Time” is a very powerful marketing benefit. You might want to use some of your free time to determine how you can use it in your marketing.