Last year, J.D. Power and Associates launched a survey designed to measure consumer familiarity, interest and purchase intent for emerging automotive technologies, both before and after an estimated market price is revealed.
Considering lighting and driver assistance systems, 2 conclusions suggest themselves:
1) There is a great correlation between the performance of the technology and the rank. The bigger the safety gain from a technology, the better is its rank.
2) There is a great correlation between the price of the technology and the rank
Lower is the price, better is the rank.
In the 14 involved features, the 7 first are at a price less than $500, while the last five are a market price higher than $1,000.
Customers like new technologies mainly when they offer a significant safety improvement, but they buy features at the lowest cost.
This point has to be considered with Xenon lighting. J.D. Power did not consider this technology in their survey but probably the rank would be in the first positions without considering market price and far behind when considering market price.
So, all lighting players have to work drastically to decrease the cost of Xenon technology. It is one of the main levers to increase worldwide Xenon take rate. Bring on the 25w Xenon system! While a premium car customer is not much troubled by a high price of a feature, the generalist car customer considers that at the first level.
DVN
General Editor