Standard market research was built for stable categories. AV market research has to track how regulators, press, and the public are moving – not just what your commercial customers say. Winston Francois builds research programs that give you the full picture.
The Problem
Public Trust Is a Market Variable That Most Research Ignores
In the autonomous vehicle category, public trust is not a brand metric – it is a direct input to your addressable market. When trust drops after a high-profile incident, ridership intent drops with it, regardless of your service's actual safety record. Most commercial market research frameworks are not built to track this variable. AV companies that rely on standard research tools get commercial data without the trust context that makes it actionable.
Regulatory Sentiment Is Moving Faster Than Annual Research Cycles
State-level permit regimes, federal NHTSA guidance, and city-specific operating rules are all shifting simultaneously. By the time an annual market research report is published and read, the regulatory landscape it describes has changed. AV companies need a continuous regulatory sentiment tracking capability, not a point-in-time snapshot. Without it, go-to-market decisions are made on outdated assumptions about what is possible in each market.
Competitor Intelligence Is Incomplete Without Incident Tracking
Understanding where Waymo, Aurora, Nuro, and others are operating, what their permit status is, and how their safety events affect category perception requires a different kind of competitive monitoring than most research programs provide. A competitor's permit suspension or a widely covered safety incident does not just affect their business – it affects public willingness to use AV services across the board. Your research program needs to track these events and model their effect on your own market position.
Commercial Adoption Signals Are Buried Across Too Many Sources
Fleet operator sentiment, logistics company procurement cycles, corporate shuttle decision timelines, and last-mile delivery operator priorities are all relevant commercial signals for AV companies pursuing B2B revenue. These signals are scattered across industry publications, procurement databases, conference proceedings, and direct outreach data. Without a structured research program to aggregate and interpret them, your sales and marketing teams are operating on anecdote rather than evidence.
How We Help
Winston Francois designs AV market research programs that treat public trust, regulatory sentiment, and commercial adoption as three interconnected data streams – not three separate research projects. The starting point is a research architecture document that maps the specific decisions you need to make in the next 12 months and identifies the information gaps that are preventing you from making them confidently.
Public trust tracking is built around a combination of quantitative sentiment measurement and qualitative depth interviews. We design survey instruments that separate general AV awareness from intent to use, willingness to pay, and trust in specific use cases like robotaxi, freight, and delivery robots. We run these at regular intervals so you can see directional movement, not just a static reading.
Regulatory sentiment tracking is structured as an ongoing monitoring program. We identify the specific regulatory bodies, legislative committees, and advocacy groups that are most consequential for your operating markets and build a structured feed that surfaces relevant signals on a weekly basis. We synthesize these into a monthly briefing that your policy and go-to-market teams can act on.
Competitor intelligence goes beyond tracking funding rounds and press releases. We monitor permit filings, service area expansions, incident reports, and public commentary from competitor executives to build a picture of where the competitive landscape is actually moving. We pay particular attention to how competitor safety events and regulatory actions affect category-level public trust metrics.
Commercial market research is designed around the specific buyer profiles you are targeting. For fleet operators, that means understanding procurement decision timelines and the operational metrics they use to evaluate AV services. For corporate clients, it means mapping the internal champions and blockers that determine whether a pilot becomes a contract. We design primary research that gets you direct access to these buyers rather than relying on secondary sources.
All research outputs are designed for decision use, not for reading. Every deliverable comes with an explicit set of implications and recommended actions, not just findings.
What we deliver
- Research architecture: decision map, information gap analysis, and methodology design
- Public trust tracking program: survey instruments, cadence, and sentiment dashboard
- Regulatory sentiment monitoring: source map, weekly feed, and monthly synthesis brief
- Competitor intelligence framework: tracking structure, incident monitor, and quarterly analysis
- Commercial buyer research: primary interviews, procurement signal analysis, and buyer persona update
- Quarterly synthesis report with explicit go-to-market implications and recommended actions
In the AV category, public trust is a leading indicator of commercial demand. Companies that track trust as a market variable – not just a brand metric – will consistently make better go-to-market decisions than those that do not.
Our Methodology
The Winston Francois 90-day research sprint starts with a research architecture session in the first two weeks. We interview your executive team, your policy leads, and your sales and marketing leadership to map the decisions that research needs to support. We then design a research program that is sized to those decisions – not to produce a comprehensive industry report that sits on a shelf.
The first 30 days deliver the foundational instruments: survey designs, regulatory source maps, competitor tracking structures, and the buyer interview guide. We run the first wave of primary research – typically 15-25 qualitative interviews with target buyers and a quantitative trust measurement with a representative public sample in your primary operating markets.
Days 31 through 60 synthesize the first wave of data into a working strategy brief. We present findings with explicit implications for your go-to-market strategy, your regulatory affairs team, and your product roadmap. We identify the two or three research questions that produced the most surprising or consequential findings and propose a follow-on research design for each.
The final 30 days establish the ongoing research cadence that your team will maintain after the sprint. We hand off the survey instruments, the regulatory monitoring sources, the competitor tracking structure, and the reporting templates. We train the staff who will own ongoing research operations and document the synthesis process so findings consistently reach the people who need to act on them.
How We Work
Our AV market research engagements operate on a 90-day sprint model with clear deliverable milestones at 30, 60, and 90 days. The engagement is project-scoped with a fixed fee – there are no hourly billing surprises and no scope creep without explicit agreement.
In the first 30 days, you receive the research architecture document, the first wave of primary research instruments, and the initial data collection results. By day 60, the full synthesis report is in your hands with go-to-market implications and a recommended research cadence for the following quarter.
The final 30 days focus on building the internal capability that lets your team run ongoing research without us. We document every process, train the staff who will own it, and make ourselves available for questions for 30 days after the engagement closes.
For companies that want ongoing research support after the sprint, we offer a quarterly research program at a fixed retainer. The retainer includes one wave of primary research per quarter, monthly regulatory sentiment briefs, and a quarterly synthesis report.
- A research program designed around specific go-to-market decisions, not generic industry coverage
- Public trust measurement infrastructure that can detect directional shifts before they affect commercial metrics
- Regulatory sentiment tracking that gives policy and go-to-market teams a 30-60 day decision advantage
- Commercial buyer intelligence that is grounded in primary research, not industry reports
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Frequently asked questions
How do you measure public trust in AV services rather than just brand awareness?
Trust measurement in the AV context requires separating several distinct constructs: general awareness of AV technology, familiarity with specific services, willingness to use specific use cases like robotaxi or freight, and the specific factors that are driving or suppressing that willingness. We design survey instruments that measure each of these separately so you can identify which trust levers are most movable and what communications or operational changes are most likely to move them.
What regulatory markets and bodies do you track as part of the monitoring program?
The monitoring program is configured around your specific operating markets and expansion targets. Standard coverage includes NHTSA rulemaking and guidance, state DMV permit programs in California, Texas, Arizona, and other major AV markets, city-level operating agreements and permit regimes, and relevant congressional committee activity. We also track advocacy organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions whose output tends to influence regulatory thinking. The source list is reviewed and updated quarterly.
Can market research actually influence our regulatory strategy?
Yes, and this is one of the most underused applications of research in the AV category. Public trust data, when structured correctly, can directly support the arguments your policy team makes to regulators about permit expansion, service area approvals, and operational parameters. Regulators respond to evidence of public acceptance. Research that documents growing trust, high satisfaction among existing users, and broad demographic interest in AV services gives your policy team something concrete to present.
How do you handle research across multiple operating markets with different regulatory environments?
We design the research architecture to separate market-specific findings from category-wide trends. Public trust measurement is run with market-specific samples so you can compare trust levels and drivers across San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin, and other operating markets. Regulatory monitoring is organized by jurisdiction. Commercial buyer research targets the specific fleet operator and enterprise buyer profiles that are most relevant in each market. The synthesis report then draws out both the market-specific implications and the cross-market patterns.
What does a Winston Francois AV market research engagement cost?
Project-based research engagements for AV companies typically range from $20K-$45K for a full 90-day sprint including primary research, synthesis, and capability handoff. The range reflects differences in geographic scope, the number of buyer segments being researched, and the depth of regulatory monitoring required. Ongoing quarterly research retainers start at $12K per quarter. We provide a detailed scope and fee estimate after an initial diagnostic conversation.
Do you work with early-stage AV companies that do not yet have commercial customers to research?
Yes. For pre-commercial AV companies, the research focus shifts toward prospective buyer intent, regulatory landscape mapping in target markets, and competitive positioning analysis. We can design research programs that give you the market intelligence you need to make product and go-to-market decisions before you have a customer base to draw on. This work is often the most consequential research an AV company does because it shapes the initial go-to-market strategy.
