COLUMBUS – With an era of major change in transportation looming in the not-too-distant future, the central Ohio auto dealers put their best feet forward this weekend during the Columbus International Auto Show.
2019 Columbus International Auto Show presented by Huntington
March 14 – Sunday, March 17
Greater Columbus Convention Center.
Tickets: $12 ($10 online); Seniors (65+); $8 Students $6 (children 9 and under free)
Click here for a parking and traffic map
Along with the newest models from more than 36 manufacturers, the show features five indoor/outdoor “ride and drives.” Chevrolet, Honda, Dodge Ram, Subaru and Toyota offer visitors the chance to drive new vehicles inside the show and on downtown streets.
Show-goers can take a walk down the red carpet of Luxury Lane and admire exotic cars from Lamborghini, Rolls Royce & Bentley.
At the Kids PitStop, children can burn off a little energy on a playground, trampoline and basketball court and play with the DMG Power Wheels race track.
The 16.8 million new cars and light trucks the National Automobile Dealers Association anticipates Americans will buy in 2019 would be 1.1 percent decline compared to 2018 but would represent the fifth straight year of sales at or above the 17 million mark.
That comes as a new survey shows, while Americans expect to leave the driving to the cars in the next decade, they aren’t ready to take their hands off the wheel just yet.
Taken in the wake of some highly-publicized accidents involving autonomous vehicles, an annual survey by the auto club AAA shows 71 percent of people are still afraid to ride in fully self-driving vehicles, compared to 63 percent before the incidents.
More than half of those surveyed think that most cars will have the ability to drive themselves by 2029 but experts agree that it will be decades before self-driving cars are the norm. Nevertheless, they say it is likely that more highly automated vehicles will be on the roads in the coming years.
More than 4,000 passengers have ridden Ohio’s first self-driving passenger vehicles, the shuttles operated by May Mobility that have been circling the “Smart Circuit” along the Scioto Mile, near the downtown riverfront, since December.
The Columbus Partnership’s Smart Columbus and DriveOhio hope the demonstration of the shuttles will establish a familiarity among potential riders that will allow self-driving vehicle technology to expand to other neighborhoods and other cities.