In its fourth year, the Future Vehicle Planner has become a widely cited source for automotive product planners, marketers, and technology developers. With responses from nearly 18,000 licensed drivers who plan to purchase a new (not used) vehicle within the next three years, this year’s edition is AutoPacific’s most comprehensive to date. The study combines extensive psychographic and demographic data with the Future Attribute Demand Study (FADS) and the EV Consumer Insights Study to paint a detailed picture of evolving consumer expectations for new vehicles.
The headline: features that once seemed futuristic — hands-free highway driving, lane-change assist, even fully driverless cars — are now some of the most in-demand options on buyers’ wish lists.
Autonomous Features Surge in Popularity
Leading the pack in 2025 is a feature previously met with hesitation: hands-off, semi-autonomous driving for highway use only, with the driver still required to pay attention. Demand for this function — now offered in vehicles such as General Motors’ Super Cruise and Ford’s BlueCruise — has risen a dramatic 20 percentage points over last year. It is now tied with another, more familiar ADAS feature, rear automatic emergency braking, as the most desired technology among new car intenders, each earning interest from 43% of respondents.
Rear automatic emergency braking, which applies the brakes if a vehicle is about to collide with an obstacle while reversing, has become more widely adopted in both mass-market and luxury vehicles. This growing exposure to the feature’s safety benefits appears to be driving greater consumer appreciation and trust.
Six more autonomy-related features made the top 15 list, including adaptive cruise control with lane-centering and stop-and-go capabilities, emergency evasive steering assist, and rear cross-traffic alert with automatic braking. Perhaps most notably, there is also rising interest in more ambitious capabilities: fully autonomous driving, either hands-off and supervised or entirely driverless to a destination, with or without manual override.
This upward trend suggests a marked shift in attitudes about automation behind the wheel.
Trust and Familiarity Are Building
For the past few years, features that allow a car to take over critical driving functions have suffered from tepid consumer interest. The reasons have been predictable: safety concerns, unfamiliarity, and a general unease about ceding control to machines in complex driving environments. But that skepticism may finally be softening.
In 2025, more respondents than ever say they trust advanced vehicle safety systems that can prevent accidents automatically. Many also agree with the statement, “I want my vehicle to be able to safely drive itself so I can do other things (read, watch movies, work, etc.).”
Younger consumers, in particular, are fueling this change. The median age of survey participants dropped from 44 in 2024 to 39 this year. That shift is more than statistical — it reflects a generational handoff in the car-buying population. According to AutoPacific’s director of marketing and consumer research, Deborah Grieb, members of Gen Y and Gen Z are not only more comfortable with automation in general, but they are also more likely to expect it in their next vehicle.
“As younger generations continue to enter the new vehicle market, they bring more knowledge of technology and enthusiasm for having it in their vehicle,” Grieb noted.
Although fully driverless passenger vehicles remain unavailable for individual purchase, early exposure to such technology — through robotaxi pilots in cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Shanghai — appears to be building trust. “With a global autonomous vehicle race underway, increased consumer demand and confidence are great news for the U.S. market,” Grieb added.
Not Just What Consumers Want — But What They Insist On
New for 2025, AutoPacific introduced a layer of nuance to its survey: it asked respondents whether the features they wanted were “must-haves” or simply “nice-to-haves.” This distinction helps automakers understand which technologies are critical to closing a sale — and which ones, while attractive, may not be deal-breakers.
The results were telling. Several well-established features — all-wheel drive, blind spot cameras, power-adjustable front seats, and front-and-rear parking sensors — were named “must-haves” by over 60% of the people who wanted them. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto also made that cut.
Conversely, newer technologies with high appeal — such as the top-ranked hands-off highway driving feature — are still seen as optional. Just 33% of those who want the feature consider it a must-have.
“Great new ideas can be very appealing to consumers, but until they are commonplace, consumers are less likely to insist on having those new features in their next vehicles,” said Ed Kim, AutoPacific’s president and chief analyst. He suggests that automakers who offer highly desirable but less common technologies stand to gain a competitive advantage, especially as the market moves further toward electrification and automation.
The Road Ahead for Automakers
The implications for automakers are substantial. Features once dismissed as niche or experimental are now approaching mainstream relevance. Manufacturers looking to position themselves at the forefront of the next wave of mobility would be wise to take note of not just what consumers want — but how that demand is evolving with age, exposure, and familiarity.
If 2025’s data is any indication, the future of driving may be increasingly defined by what the driver no longer has to do.