海角大神

Over the past decade and a half, much of the world has changed the way that it consumes media. We download music in seconds, rather than visiting record shops. We use gadgets like Roku and apps like Sling instead of keeping pricey cable TV subscriptions. And most of us emptied our gloveboxes of service station roadmaps years ago. (Though in fairness, we stopped stowing our gloves there ages ago, too.)

At the center of all these changes sits one device: the smartphone. And according to Autotrader's Car Tech Impact Study,聽the ease with which auto shoppers can pair their smartphone with a car's infotainment system is a major factor in purchase decisions.

To come to that conclusion, Autotrader worked with marketing firms聽KS&R, Inc. and Research Now to survey 1,012 American vehicle owners, all of whom were 18 or older. 聽The poll was conducted online last September.聽

Admittedly, web-based surveys aren't always great at gauging public opinion. The data is necessarily limited to participants with web access -- not to mention those inclined to take polls -- so we ought to view the data with a tiny bit of skepticism.聽

However, the survey聽does聽confirm the results of other polls, which have tended to reveal that auto shoppers are聽听颈苍听. Among Autotrader's findings:

• 77 percent of respondents said that聽finding a car with everything on their technology wish list聽was more important than the color of the car. (That's eight points higher than last year.)聽
• 65 percent of respondents said they聽would switch car brands if it meant that they could get the technology features聽they wanted. (That figure is up nine percent from 2014.)
• 57 percent of respondents wished that automakers would聽stop trying to develop their own infotainment systems聽(looking at you,聽) and focus their energies on making it easier to sync smartphones with third-party providers like Apple (CarPlay) or Google (Android Auto).
• 47 percent of respondents said that they would聽sync their smartwatch to a car's infotainment system聽(if they owned a smartwatch, that is).
• 46 percent of respondents said that they would聽shell out up to $1,499 for an interactive dashboard.
• 39 of respondents said that they'd聽rather use the navigation app on their smartphone聽than the system built into their dashboards. (That's less than half of the study participants, obviously, but it's also up 19 percent from 2014.)

That said, infotainment isn't the only area in which consumers are hungry for advanced technology.聽聽A huge 70 percent of respondents said that they wanted autonomous features in their next cars -- features like parking assist and collision avoidance -- and were more likely to consider vehicles that had those offerings.

In fact, safety features trumped infotainment by a fairly big margin. Among respondents,聽83 percent said that those features were likely to be more important factors in their future purchasing decisions.

The big winners in the industry will be those who manage to include聽both聽sets of features, says聽Autotrader research analyst聽Rachelle Petusky: "Consumers have learned to integrate the technology into their lives. When they get into their cars they expect to stay connected with simple and easy smartphone integration. The manufacturers who blend that with autonomous features are the ones who will win."

This article first appeared at .