要做到这两件事，无人驾驶汽车才能成为主流

我们对无人驾驶汽车的恐惧感正在逐渐增加。美国汽车协会（AAA）2018年5月的调查显示，不信任这类汽车的美国人的比例达到了惊人的73%，比2017年底的63%还有所提高。

尽管该领域的竞争日益升温，丰田（Toyota）、通用汽车（General Motors）、Alphabet和特斯拉（Tesla）正在设立野心勃勃的目标并押下重注，但这个问题依旧存在：美国人做好了接受无人驾驶汽车的准备吗？以后会有准备好的那一天吗？

在研究了过去十年里复杂的机构变革后，我意识到了促使公众产生行为变化，让他们成功接受新技术的必要前提。社会若要接纳无人驾驶汽车，需要在行为上出现巨大变化，尤其是现在公众的信赖度还在持续降低。不过，我们如今不支持自动驾驶，并不意味着我们将来也不会接受。

以下是自动驾驶汽车成为现实的两大前提：

必须赢得信任

任何新技术若要被人们接受，与终端用户建立信任是关键。就像罗马不是一天建成的一样，信任也不是一夜就能建立的。

幸运的是，对无人驾驶汽车而言，几个培养用户信任感的重要里程碑已然实现，尤其是我们对GPS的信任和Uber与Lyft等拼车服务的普及。

打车的人学会了信任拼车服务，因为他们的担忧得到了环节。GPS功能确保了打车服务的成功率很高，面对一个完全陌生的人，地址透明为打车者营造了安全感，而上车和下车点的改变也变得无缝。换句话说，在第一位用户叫车之前，Uber技术下潜藏的许多问题就已经得到了解决。

对自动驾驶汽车而言，情况也是如此。就像爬梯子一样，无人驾驶技术在最终得到应用之前，还需要一步步取信于人。没有坚实的信赖基础，司机不会让手离开方向盘。

美国的汽车消费者已经学会了信任技术，例如泊车辅助系统、车道偏离警示和盲点探测，这一切都协助司机与汽车建立了新的关系。我们几乎没人意识到，汽车厂商已经通过一项项实用技术，让我们渐渐放开方向盘了。

尽管如此，如果对底层技术的安全性和可靠性仍然存有恐惧，消费者就很难对无人驾驶汽车感到放心。为了增长信心，消费者需要看到一小群投入的早期用户证明技术的实用性和安全性，并将此告知大众。

尽管在无人驾驶汽车领域，技术创新者是第一批先驱，对这项尖端技术的风险也更具接受度，但这些早期采用者对于投资何种新技术也更精挑细选。有关自动驾驶汽车安全性的不断的负面新闻可能会让他们敬而远之——而按照埃弗雷特·罗杰斯的模型，早期采用者群体对于建立必要的交流网络，在社会中更广泛地推广创新至关重要。

一场完美的风暴

如今，每月使用Uber的用户达到了7,500万人。是什么导致了它被广泛采用？这是有意而为，还是因缘巧合？

答案是两者多少都有一点。Uber并未独力促成导致该技术蓬勃发展的行为变化。它进入了大众运输开始力不从心、城市化进程加快、公共交通的需求急剧增加的市场。这一系列事件引发的风暴成为了推动公司冲向成功的力量。

尽管通过技术解决问题，在如今已被视为寻常，但自动驾驶汽车若要走进现实，我们就需要同样的完美风暴。人们对时间的需求增加、日常生活的进一步自动化、司机辅助技术的进步和不断的城市化，会导致无人驾驶技术的登场变得更加迫切，推动司机开始接受新行为。

不过首先，业内的领袖必须了解消费者接受自动驾驶汽车的过程：信任技术，有信心使用它，社会和环境也在共同施加压力。这些因素必须结合起来，才能推动大规模的行为变化，这是无人驾驶技术成为主流所必需的。（财富中文网）

注：作者埃里克·埃利斯是领导力和战略加速公司Kotter的负责人。

译者：严匡正

We’re growing more afraid of self-driving vehicles. A whopping 73% of Americans don’t trust autonomous cars, up from 63% in late 2017, according to a AAA survey released in May 2018.

While competition is heating up—with players like Toyota, General Motors, Alphabet, and Tesla setting ambitious goals and making big bets—the question remains: Are Americans ready for driverless cars? Will we ever be?

As I’ve studied complex organizational transformations over the past decade, I’ve come to recognize what must happen to create the behavioral change that makes adoption of new technologies successful. A societal shift toward self-driving vehicles will require such massive behavioral change, especially as trust continues to plummet. But just because we wouldn’t get behind that self-turning wheel today, doesn’t mean we wouldn’t take that chance tomorrow.

Here are two things that need to happen to make self-driving cars a reality:

Trust must be earned

With the adoption of any new technology, establishing trust with end users is table stakes. And just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, trust isn’t established overnight.

Luckily for self-driving cars, several important milestones have already been reached on the road to fostering consumer trust in autonomous vehicles—notably, our reliance on GPS and the growing use of ride services like Uber and Lyft.

Riders learned to trust ride services because fears were mitigated. GPS functions ensured a high rate of ride success; transparency of location created a sense of safety for riders in the presence of a complete stranger; and changes in pickup and dropoff locations were seamless. In other words, many of the questions underlying Uber’s technology had been answered before the first rider hailed a car.

The same story holds true for self-driving cars. Like climbing a ladder, driverless technology will have to be proven to people step by step before the ultimate rollout. Drivers aren’t going to take their hands off the wheel without a solid foundation of trust.

American automobile consumers have already learned to trust technology such as vehicle backup cameras, lane departure assists, and blind spot detection, all of which assist with building a new relationship between car and driver. Few of us realize that automobile manufacturers have been prying our hands from the steering wheel one useful piece of technology at a time.

Still, it will be difficult to make consumers comfortable with autonomous vehicles if lingering fears remain about the safety and reliability of the underlying technology. In order to have confidence, consumers need to see a small group of engaged, early adopters demonstrate the technology’s usefulness and safety, and communicate it to the masses.

While technology innovators, who have been first movers when it comes to autonomous vehicles, are typically more comfortable with the risks associated with cutting-edge technology, these early adopters are selective about which new technologies they invest in. Continued negative news about the safety of self-driving cars might keep them away—and this early adopter pool, according to Everett Rogers’s model, is essential for building the communication networks necessary to roll out innovations more broadly throughout society.

A perfect storm

Seventy-five million people now use Uber each month. What enabled this widespread adoption? Was it driven by intention—or chance?

The answer is: a little bit of both. Uber didn’t single-handedly enable the behavioral change that allowed its technology to take off. It entered the market when mass transit was already beginning to fail, urbanization was increasing, and demand for public transit was through the roof. It was this perfect storm of events that fueled the company’s success.

While the tech-enablement of any task is now accepted as par for the course, for self-driving cars to truly become a reality, we’ll need that same kind of perfect storm. Increasing demands on people’s time, greater automation of everyday life, advancements in driver-assistive technologies, and continued urbanization will create the urgency needed for the rollout of driverless technology and adoption of new driver behaviors.

But first, leaders in the field must understand the process through which consumers might embrace self-driving cars: trust in the technology, confidence in its use, and the convergence of societal and environmental pressures. All of these factors must come together to drive the large-scale behavior change necessary for driverless cars to go mainstream.

Eric Ellis is a principal at Kotter, a leadership and strategy acceleration firm.