The next greatest leap in vehicle technology is becoming more and more mainstream every day.  It won’t be long until you see one of these in your neighborhoods, a fully automated vehicle.

It was once a dream, pictured in movies and the imagination of Americans for generations. Ever since the rise of the ‘horseless-carriage’  itself, a car that can drive itself is finally here.  “The technology exists, and prototypes are already hitting the roads” exclaims FenderBender.com. What does this mean for the auto body industry?

Daniel Gage, spokesperson for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM) says the following regarding auto body repairs and automated vehicles:

“We’re going to have huge reliance on [independent] shops,” Gage says. “There are too many cars on the roads and too few dealerships to have people only go to authorized dealerships for repairs. We don’t have enough dealerships to service the entire fleet.”

More specific to automated vehicle technology:

“As more and more companies make these standard on vehicles, those are going to be components included in the automated vehicle,” Gage says. “The phase-in of those technologies will be incremental and evolutionary.”

The following data from the reveals the mind sets American consumers have toward automated vehicles*:

To read the full article from FenderBender.com, please follow this link.

*According to a poll of 2,000 American drivers released by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in June 2013