Comment by 0xbadcafebee
2 days ago
I don't know about those other things, but driverless trucking isn't going to happen within the next 50 years at least. Besides all the logistical challenges and risks to businesses throughout the supply chain, you're talking about 3.6 million American truck-driver jobs. There is little else that politicians love more than saving jobs, especially blue collar, and that's a helluva lot of jobs. To put it in perspective, the TSA is basically a jobs program that costs 12 billion to employ only 58,000 people who don't do anything useful. Politicians'll do whatever it takes to keep those 3.6 million jobs. Add on the fact that truckers can and do organize, and it doesn't take many of them to shut down shipping and transportation. The trucking industry is also reticent to upgrade or spend more money; they won't even invest in electric trucks with drivers. And there's a wide variety of trucks out there with complex routes that won't be mapped, so only a few major highways will be covered, meaning you still need a driver. There will be pilot programs but that's it.
> they won't even invest in electric trucks with drivers.
Do any of these make sense economically right now? The Tesla one is mainly being piloted hauling potato chips for Pepsico because they are so light weight. Few of the Tesla Semi numbers from the presentation seemed to come true (and the part about having autonomous follower convoys working in ~2017...), and you had the guy from Nikola rolling it down a hill and needing a presidential pardon.
People only hear about the tech companies' efforts, but actually Volvo, Peterbilt, and Freightliner have had EV models for a while now. Tesla's truck sucks but the others don't because they're built on established platforms (though their range is ~250mi). At the end of the day the trucks are way too expensive and there's no charger locations for them.
tl;dr no it's not economically viable right now, but my point is that it's an extra expense, and self-driving is more complicated/fraught than even an EV truck. trucking companies want either a very easy cost savings, or stick to what they know. (to give you an idea of this: many companies still use paper and pencil to manage driver schedules/routes)