Despite widespread expectations of a disruptive change in society’s mobility though autonomous cars, scholarly research inthe field is scarce. By combining theory-building, in-depth research among experts with established theories, the authors develop and test a model to understand adoption drivers of autonomous cars on a sample of 642 respondents representative to the German population in terms of age, gender and geographical distribution. Results suggest that factors related to potential users’ adoption intention for autonomous cars may not be precisely the same as those suggested by experts. In addition, moderator analysesprovide insights into how different types of users process autonomous cars. Stakeholders both from academia and managerial practice may find these results useful when evaluating usage behaviors in the future market for autonomous cars.