# The Future of Autonomous Vehicles in the Opinion of Automotive Market Users
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Autonomy Levels in the Automotive Market
Figure 5: Perception of the levels of autonomy for the AV market among respondents by gender in the 26–40 age group: (**a**) female; (**b**) male. The smallest age group participating in the study--only 4.3% of the respondents--were elderly people over 60 (Figure 7a,b). In this age group, among women, the indications for level 2 of autonomy (in the period of 10-20 years) were dominant, and levels 3, 4 and 5 were not taken into account at all. On the other hand, men indicated the development perspective for AVs for a period of more than 20 years for level 1, i.e., a small support for a car, which today, among modern cars on the road, perform various functions available on the automotive market (cruise control, reversing or parking assistant, etc.). Thus, levels 4 and 5 were omitted as a potential future trend. In further stages of the interpretation of the obtained research results, reference was made to replacing traditional cars with different types of vehicles: HVs, EVs, standard vehicles, but supported by selected functions of autonomous vehicles and, of course, AVs. The analysis shows that among people who know the concept, as many as 68.4% say that AVs will gradually replace the traditional ones. On the other hand, in terms of the automotive market, according to the respondents, HVs will be the most popular in Poland in the coming years (39.4% of respondents' indications) as well as standard vehicles (SVs)--21.2%. It should be added that a similar number of responses were obtained for SVs with autonomous power steering and EVs--18.7% and 18%, respectively. AVs were indicated by only 2.8% of the respondents. Figure 6: Perception of the levels of autonomy for the AV market among respondents by gender in the 41–60 age group: (a) female; (b) male. Figure 7: Perception of the levels of autonomy for the AV market among respondents by gender in the age group above 60 years: (a) female; (b) male. In order to better present the obtained results, in Figures 8-11, in relation to the above analysis, basic descriptive statistics (location measures) are presented including the median, quartiles, minimum and maximum for two variables; the ranges of the variable \"place of residence of respondents\" are marked on the horizontal axis, while on the vertical axis, individual categories for the variable \"vehicle type which, in the opinion of respondents, will be the most popular in the near future\" are marked. The survey lists different types of vehicles in terms of their propulsion: standard vehicle--SV, hybrid vehicle--HV, electric vehicle--EV, standard vehicle with autonomous support--SV+ and autonomous vehicle--AV. An autonomous vehicle can be propelled in various ways (SV--petrol or diesel, EV or HV), but in this questionnaire, respondents did not distinguish between the driving method according to its propulsion. Thus, vehicles (SV, EV, HV and SV+) are considered as human-driven vehicles (traditional vehicles), and an AV is to be understood as a self-steering vehicle without human intervention. Figure 8: Perception of the popularity of particular types of vehicles among the respondents according to the place of residence: 1—city with more than 300,000 residents; 2—city to 10,000 residents; 3—100,000–300,000 residents; 4—rural areas. Figure 9: Perception of the popularity of particular types of vehicles among the respondents in terms of the respondent’s age: 1—41–60 years; 2—26–40 years; 3—60 years and more; 4—19–25 years. As shown in Figure 8, over 50% of respondents were living in large cities with more than 300,000 inhabitants, and they mainly indicated HVs, but also SVs and EVs. People living in cities from 100,000 to 300,000 inhabitants--mainly indicated HVs and EVs. On the other hand, people living in smaller cities and rural areas, in addition to HVs, also indicated EVs. As shown in the data presented in Figure 9, the majority of respondents aged 41-60 indicated mainly HVs, but also SVs+. People aged 26-40 indicated perceptions similar to people from the previous age group, but adding EVs.