Two in three Croatians said they would consider switching from petrol-fuelled vehicles to using alternatives, a recent survey on the future of transport by the car tyre manufacturer Goodyear showed.

Goodyear released results of an online poll on Thursday, which was conducted in Slovenia and Croatia via Facebook’s instant messaging app Messenger. The survey covered some 1,800 Croatians and nearly 1,000 Slovenians and was held between October and December last year.

When asked whether they would be inclined to start using alternatives to the usual petrol-fuelled vehicles, 34 percent agreed and said they would opt for purely electric vehicles, another 31 percent also agreed and said they would choose hybrid vehicles, while the remaining 35 said they still preferred petrol cars.

However, in spite of the significant support for alternatives vehicles, and the fact that it is home to Rimac Automobili, an electric hypercar maker, the sales of alternative vehicles are famously low in Croatia.

In spite of subsidies and free charging, only 0.2 percent of nearly 59,000 new cars sold in the country in 2018 were electrics or hybrids, putting it among bottom three EU countries in terms of popularity of alternative vehicles, along with Poland and Latvia.

On the other hand, when asked about the idea of car sharing to presumably help drive down emmissions or cost, Croatians were far less enthusiastic. When faced wirth a choice of using their own car, a high-speed train, or car sharing, as a preferred transportation option, only 13 percent said they would opt for the latter, while 76 percent – or more than three quarters – said they would go with their own vehicle.

The survey also found that nearly 80 percent of Croatians believe that in the future passenger vehicles would be able to fly to their destination.

The survey did not show any significant differences in responses from Croatians and Slovenians, except that Slovenians seem to be bigger fans of electric vehicles – 50 percent of those polled said they would opt for electrics, 32 percent said they would go for hybrids. Only 17.5 percent of Slovenians said they would still prefer petrol vehicles, which is just half of the portion of likeminded Croatians.