Driverless trucks

[HemiEd]

The driverless cars thread is getting pretty large and this information about driverless trucks is very interesting to me.
I know Walmart, from having two retired Walmart driver neighbors, is very interested in this.

"Driverless Trucking Startup Einride May be Planning a $5 Billion US IPO
Truck stops may get really quiet: Autonomous freight company Einride is considering a US listing this year that the Financial Times reports might value the Swedish startup at more than $5 billion.

Einride was the first company to put a self-driving big rig on a public road in 2019. The Swedish company’s biggest market is the US, where it kicked off a partnership with PepsiCo last fall to ship Frito-Lay snacks. Einride’s A-list client roster also includes GE Appliances, Maersk, and Heineken. The company handles routes around the world and is expected to deploy 200 trucks on UAE roads this week.

While robotrucks don’t get as much hype as robotaxis, McKinsey predicts driverless freight may rev up $600 billion in revenue by 2035 as the global shipping industry looks to go green and get a much-needed new labor force.

AI Takes the Wheel
The driverless freight biz leverages AI to learn routes and handle obstacles. A slew of startups is looking to get the edge on the most advanced AI, including driverless truck companies Gatik and Torc, which announced team-ups with Nvidia this week.

The big-rig biz may be less concerned about AI stealing human jobs than other industries. That’s because trucking’s in the midst of a major labor shortage:

The US needs 80,000 more drivers ASAP, according to the American Trucking Association, and that figure is expected to double in five years.
Europe currently needs 200,000 more truckers, McKinsey estimates, and that number will rise to 745,000 in three years.
Driverless trucks could also handle demanding 24/7 conditions and roads that are hazardous to humans. Volvo has sent driverless trucks to mines and quarries, where they have, for instance, carried limestone through dark and narrow tunnels nearly 500 feet underground.

Speed Bumps: AI won’t meet trucking’s labor demand overnight: Driverless trucks can still only operate on designated pre-mapped routes, usually from one hub to another. The industry has to wait for regulators to give their trucks the green light (Europe mostly approves routes on a case-by-case basis, while the US has a patchwork of state-level laws) — not to mention for customers to be less spooked by the sight of an empty big rig barreling toward them.

Written by Jamie Wilde"

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by scho63

You're missing one important component of this whole push: a driverless truck can run nonstop except for fuel stops and maintenance since they are not bound by keeping electronic logs of your hours driving.

Big efficiency.

That is one huge benefit, they can also probably be programmed to obey the speed limits.

I spent a few years driving coast to coast demoing automation equipment and I remember when getting close to a destination, my speed would increase. Especially when getting close to home after a long trip.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by scho63

There are already driverless trucks running a Dallas-Houston route as part of a pilot.

Others underway

https://www.ccjdigital.com/equipment...ilot-this-year

Autonomous truck maker plans driverless operations this year
Bot Auto, an autonomous truck tech developer, has announced its schedule to launch driver-out commercial freight operations in 2025.

The milestone will initiate a full-scale pilot program with continuous autonomous trucking operations between Houston and San Antonio, the company noted.

The planned driver-out program will run for a minimum of four months, hauling real cargo for commercial shippers. This initiative represents the deployment phase of Bot Auto's development approach, where periods of deployment are followed by system upgrades based on operational learnings, the company added

[scho63]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

Autonomous truck maker plans driverless operations this year
Bot Auto, an autonomous truck tech developer, has announced its schedule to launch driver-out commercial freight operations in 2025.

The milestone will initiate a full-scale pilot program with continuous autonomous trucking operations between Houston and San Antonio, the company noted.

The planned driver-out program will run for a minimum of four months, hauling real cargo for commercial shippers. This initiative represents the deployment phase of Bot Auto's development approach, where periods of deployment are followed by system upgrades based on operational learnings, the company added

There are others underway.

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

So much knowledge in the posts in this thread, very interesting to say the least.

I wonder, if an applicant is blackballed forever once testing positive for THC?

Or, once they are clean after 30 day abstinence and test negative if they would be eligible?

The big issue is if you get into a wreck, even if you are in no way at fault, they will test you and you are ****ed if they find THC.

Signed,
CDL driver who misses weed

[Megatron96]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

Nah. Docks can be equipped with hardware.

The GPS on my tractor can operate with sub inch accuracy. I’m sure the dock is the easy part.

The hard part is one of 3 things:

1. Unknown/unpredictable weather/visability/static/whatever else affects their sensors conditions.

2. Unpredictable/irrational behaviors of other drivers/pedestrians.

3. Hardware reliability.

This. Or, these. Whatever. I'm 100% confident that they can program a truck/car to maneuver at low speeds with extreme precision that would put almost any trucker to shame. But it's when it's travelling 70+ mph in winter somewhere in the mountains, at night, in a blizzard. or even if it's a nice day weatherwise, but there's black ice on the highway.


bottom line, sometime within the first 5 years, there's going to be a massive accident involving one or more of these things and a lot of people are going to die. god forbid the thing explodes during the pileup, the body count could get really gruesome.

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by BWillie

Lets fkn go.

Reduce the cost of shit is good

Suppliers will just pocket the extra money, not take it out of their prices. Lol

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Sure. I'm just saying that insurance coverage isn't exactly rocket science. You calculate the risk and build it into costs.

That's arguable.

Semi insurance is profoundly expensive. I'm not even commercial and do very few miles, 0 accidents and still want to **** punt my insurance company. Plus, if you listen to them, some of these ambulance chasing ****wad lawyers don't give a **** what your liability coverage is, they're going to sue for the whatever's on your balance sheet. And that's them talking to my puny little ass. A big company, you know they're going to try to prove negligence and go around the liability coverage.

I'm no insurance guy and certainly no lawyer, but that's what I'm hearing.

Moreover, I don't think that totally absolves the operator of carrying insurance. If there is an accident that is deemed to be a maintenance issue the operator would be liable for that.

Maybe it's all doable, but from my perspective I'd be sweating the liability if I was anywhere near manufacturing autonomous.

[Urc Burry]

Meh. I’ve been with a major LTL carrier for 13 years, and this driver shortage is comparable to ‘we’re running out of fossil fuels’.

Post covid we were busy as shit, but since Biden’s second year we’ve had drivers sitting consistently.

Driverless trucks are definitely going to be a thing, but we’re still a long ways out from it. I would think there would be years of drivers in cab with lane assist/auto steer, before going fully autonomous. But that’s jmo

[TribalElder]

Spoiler!

[Otter]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Eh, saving $75k per year on every driver's salary would let you buy a hell of an insurance policy. That seems like a problem that's far easier to solve than the self-driving tech itself.

Then lets take into consideration that 10,000 drivers (a very modest estimate) get put out of work. That's 750,000,0000 million dollars taken out of the economy and AI doesn't buy groceries, take out loans, or buy vehicles or need furniture and can do their own statistics faster than you.

Caveat emptor

[Otter]

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Zebedee DuBois

I'm just guessing here, but it seems to me that the 'over the road' part of driverless trucks would be the easiest part to tackle - but the delivery - backing into a dock after negotiating the parking lot seems like the hard part. A lot of delivery points can be a tricky, requiring a skilled driver to get into. I can imagine a robot truck locking up in some situations.

There's an industrial park near my house that gets a ton of semi traffic. Several of the businesses, however, simply don't have adequate room for the trucks to easily back in to the docks, which results in them going through slow, painful street blocking maneuvering gymnastics. Maybe a driverless truck would be better at it, but somehow I doubt it.

And I simply have a problem with enormous Skynet trucks driving all over the place. As if dealing with these goddamn things in traffic isn't bad enough already.

But I guess it's something I probably won't have to worry about it. By the time this shit gets to be commonplace, I'll likely have shuffled off this mortal coil.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by Frazod

There's an industrial park near my house that gets a ton of semi traffic. Several of the businesses, however, simply don't have adequate room for the trucks to easily back in to the docks, which results in them going through slow, painful street blocking maneuvering gymnastics. Maybe a driverless truck would be better at it, but somehow I doubt it.

And I simply have a problem with enormous Skynet trucks driving all over the place. As if dealing with these goddamn things in traffic isn't bad enough already.

But I guess it's something I probably won't have to worry about it. By the time this shit gets to be commonplace, I'll likely have shuffled off this mortal coil.

I run Guidance on my tractors and one thing i can assure you is the technology can outperform an operator.

I can run tractor. And that thing can kick my ass.

[seamonster]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

I run Guidance on my tractors and one thing i can assure you is the technology can outperform an operator.

I can run tractor. And that thing can kick my ass.

Different use case. Shipping is about transporting at "best price" and keeping just-in-time inventories stocked, not operating recursive predictable farming work (in technology farming is just old hat). Sure you can cut costs by removing all humans but how much can that scale when you're dealing with interstate traffic? I don't think it would. I'd bet that there's always going to be truckers. Fuzzy logic and ML alone isn't something I'd put behind the wheel of an eighteen wheeler on I-70.

I'd predict that this is going to play out like old cattle trains. They're going to have fleets and arrays of these driverless trucks (6,8,18,32) and they're going to slip in a human "driver" to manage and herd these things through the road ways. That would make the insurance companies happy and there's always somebody to scream at and hold liable. You'll probably have a human driver up front looking for road "clutter" (shit that wouldn't be understood by the computer vision) and a guy amongst the pack wrangling the fleet and keeping an eye on alarm rates and relief teams. If they wanted too they could scale this up to some wild numbers and get product flowing without putting the public at risk of getting MaximumOverdrived. Would ruin many a truckers life but I think we're too the point where this is going to become a reality.

[Chief Pagan]

A 'herd' of 32 trucks bumper to bumper in CA traffic trying to change lanes to make a freeway exit?

32 individual driverless trucks sound safer and much friendlier.

Even 6 sounds problematic if they are going to try and stick together. If you are getting on the freeway, the block of 6 won't let you in?

Or they will let you in and now you now longer have a herd?