[HN Gopher] The Poor ROI of Autonomy (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
The Poor ROI of Autonomy (2020)
Author : Danieru
Score : 136 points
Date : 2022-07-27 04:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| elzbardico wrote:
| As I read this kind of stuff, I can't help but feel guilty of how
| our profession is so cavalier in being an allied of capital
| against labor.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Labor doesn't want to be laboring. It's better in the long term
| to remove the need for labor than to have people trapped in
| labor but "ally" with them. We get to enjoy being programmers
| instead of farm laborers because previous generations succeeded
| in using capital to win against labor.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| What do you expect to happen to these laborers? Will they get
| to retire in comfort because our society is so rich?
|
| Heck, no. America's philosophy is if you don't work, you
| don't eat.
|
| The people investing the capital to replace the workers are
| doing this so they can capture the money that used to go to
| the workers. And that's what will continue to happen.
| int0x2e wrote:
| You may be assuming that the ones benefiting from
| automation are happy to live in a world where they are
| hated by almost everyone, and at best kept safe by using
| some private army. Imagine living in a world where "eat the
| rich" is not a fringe idea but a campaign promise...
|
| I would argue the rich would much prefer to let everyone
| live at some <low but "okay"> standard of living than have
| a few more zeros on their bank totals and live in constant
| fear.
|
| I think the world shown in the movie Elysium portrays this
| reality and its possible outcomes better than I can do. Not
| the be the best movie ever, but it got this part pretty
| well in my mind...
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Empirically, this may be true of other elites, but it is
| not true of enough American elites to make a difference.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > I would argue the rich would much prefer to let
| everyone live at some <low but "okay"> standard of living
| than have a few more zeros on their bank totals and live
| in constant fear.
|
| I suspect many of the rich don't feel they are yet _rich
| enough_ for this reasoning to be applicable to _them_....
| and each year as they get richer, their subconscious
| goalposts move a little further.
| hcks wrote:
| The exemple at hand is literally about allowing truckers to
| work from their homes and increasing their hourly rates
| int0x2e wrote:
| On an emotional level, I certainly sympathize strongly with
| this idea. I can see how tech often helps widen the gap between
| the haves and have nots. At the same time, tech advancements
| have often improved humanity's standard of living - providing
| clean water, lighting, refrigeration, cooking, etc.
|
| The basic thesis is while tech makes some jobs obsolete, but
| they will be replaced by newer jobs, and everyone benefits from
| the better, cheaper world created by the tech advancement(s).
| The main critique for this notion is asking how many of these
| new jobs are really created, and whether they offer the same
| stability and benefits.
|
| If this thesis is valid however, the other big issue that
| remains is the widening wealth gap. The solution for that is
| probably not banning automation - but rather progressive
| taxation based on one's wealth. I know some people find this
| idea evil, but it's a fantastic solution to the issue of
| extreme inequality.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Tech makes jobs obsolete, but the new jobs introduced in the
| last few hundred years only add up to a small part of the
| overall workforce (programmers excluded). CGP Grey went in
| depth on human replacement automation, and almost a decade
| later it still holds up:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
|
| The bottom line is that automating a job is obviously a net
| positive because it frees up a human to do something else
| elsewhere, while still providing the same added value as
| before. There will always be _something_ for that human to
| do, even if not a traditional style job.
|
| The gap, as you point out, is making sure that newly created
| value gets taxed and provided to that freed up person as UBI,
| so that they can continue to live and consume those products
| that the machine makes in the first place, otherwise there is
| no demand for them and capitalism doesn't work. There is no
| point in having an army of robots making hats if there's
| nobody to wear them.
| balaselvam wrote:
| This is a fantastic read. But don't agree with the conclusion.
| It's myopic. Few problems I have with this, - The cost saving of
| 600K/truck/year is low relative to the cost saving with lower
| autonomy. When improving efficiency in any operations system, the
| ROI keeps getting lower and lower with further improvements. Does
| not mean that the investment is not worth doing - The efficiency
| principle of software relies on scale. There's no reason to build
| autonomous vehicles at all if you own a single truck but this
| makes sense when you have a large fleet. That's why software
| earns with scale. 600K/yr is a single truck saving. It becomes
| significant over the scale of trucks and the years.
|
| The unit economics is wonderful to go through. Appreciate the
| research!
| rflrob wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > The hardest 1% of the technical problem, automating the
| surface streets and interchanges, would end up being worth only
| about $600/truck/yr. Level 4 truck autonomy has less value than
| a daily coffee.
|
| Note that savings is $600, not $600,000. For a $100K truck,
| that's 0.6% per year. Not nothing, but they're happy to let
| someone else do the Herculean effort to get to L4.
|
| For each programmer on a team that could do it in a year for,
| say, $240K in comp, you'd need 400 truck-years ($40M worth of
| trucks for 1 year) to make it a break even proposition. How
| many programmer-years do you think it would take to build L4
| autonomous trucks? How many programmer-years have FAANG alone
| (leave out auto manufacturers or taxi apps) spent over the last
| decade on autonomous driving?
| bluGill wrote:
| Autonomous trucks are just some minor differences from
| Autonomous cars. No auto manufacture dares risk someone else
| come out with an autonomous car that is enough safer than
| human drivers that governments mandate it. This is mostly
| about all the patents needed to make it work that the first
| mover will get. As such all car companies are investing in
| this to ensure if someone makes it works they will have it
| too, or at least enough useful patents that they can get a
| good licensing deal.
|
| I think Tesla is the only company attempting this alone, all
| the other car manufactures are just in some form of
| partnership with others. These partnerships are known to
| include the big truck manufactures. I suppose there are a few
| car companies not investing in this (either tiny, or not
| selling cars in western countries).
| senectus1 wrote:
| I work for a Mining company that has autonomous dumptrucks (among
| other things), and the autonomy has _proven_ its ROI quite
| nicely. So much so that we are expanding its use and automating
| more things like light vehicles and drill rigs etc.
|
| Its not cut and dry / black and white, there has been some loss
| in efficiency in some areas but that is a learning process and
| we're constantly reviewing and updating.
|
| For us its about economy of scale, and given we control our mine
| sites 100% its a bit simpler than fwy's and hwy's etc.. we dont
| get inattentive drivers and drunk drivers and teenagers in
| blinged up ricerboxes.
|
| The value its added has shown me that autonomy on the public
| roads is definitely going to be a thing and probably very soon. I
| would expect insurance companies to be the biggest drivers...
| offering discounts to vehicles that are not driven by humans.
| follow by municipal councils, who will notice that the more
| autonomous vehicles there are, the fewer accidents there will be
| and the better traffic flow is thereby reducing the need for road
| expansions and traffic management upgrades.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| > the more autonomous vehicles there are ... better traffic
| flow
|
| Won't this better traffic flow be offset by new congestion from
| AVs using the capacity of public roads as free car parks?
|
| aka the Jevons Paradox
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| This is the case for all transit, known as induced demand.
| Increase the number of lanes on a road and you'll get as bad
| if not worse traffic than before as the increased capacity
| results in more people driving.
| myroon5 wrote:
| Unmanned Remotely-Supervised Truck questions:
|
| I wonder how latency is handled. I wonder how close nearby you'd
| still want the remote driver since someone across the world would
| have at least hundreds of milliseconds in delay communicating
| back and forth
|
| Also, what happens in periods of disconnectivity? It seems like
| you'd still need some autonomous capability then, although it
| might be lessened to only needing to pull over?
| int0x2e wrote:
| For Starsky's engineering / demo purposes - they could limit
| themselves to a few safe routes with good connectivity. Just
| use a couple of cell modems from different networks, maybe add
| a satellite backup to be extra safe and you should be safe
| enough if the truck can do basic collision avoidance and lane-
| keeping.
|
| For the future, the good news is that the world is already
| headed towards a state where roads come with high-speed
| connectivity infrastructure for vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-
| infrastructure and vehicle-to-x communication. Building
| reliable, high-speed connectivity to the road makes a lot of
| sense if you want autonomy to really take off.
| upbeat_general wrote:
| This is pretty simple, there's really no need to give direct
| steering/throttle control. As an option, it's good to have, but
| any real system will default to higher level commands, e.g.
| drive to this location, pull over, etc.
| bluGill wrote:
| If they have to have an office in every state that is no
| problem. Except maybe Alaska there are enough cities that you
| can open an office in every state very quickly and hire people
| to live there. In fact work from home might even be useful. I
| could well see them hiring remote people with a "must live
| within 100 miles of X small town and have a reliable car". 95%
| of the time they will work from home, but that other 5% they
| use their car to drive to wherever the stuck truck is and
| figure out how to get out of trouble.
| freemint wrote:
| We are incredibly far away from autonomous trucks. I am not aware
| of a single truck that you can buy that offers assisted (as in
| you press a button) lane switching. There are lane keeping
| assistants and assistants which use cameras to check whether
| switching lanes is unsafe due to other vehicles on the road.
|
| Waymo seems to be working on it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z09jND0G6HQ but the fact that
| this 20 second maneuver is warranting a video in their eyes
| should tell you how complicated it is.
| victor9000 wrote:
| With all the hoopla that went into self-driving cars, why do we
| still not have self-driving trains? Operating on a fixed track
| reduces the problem space quite a bit, no? So if the technology
| can't get there for trains, then it will never get there for
| cars.
| jussij wrote:
| The Sydney Metro has 22 driver-less trains operating across 13
| stations:
|
| https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/australia/australia...
| geek_at wrote:
| Complex non digital signals. My neighbor is a train conductor
| and he had an accident because he missed a signal. He almost
| died and had to be cut out of the cabin. Some passengers were
| also hurt. Imagine the outcry when a ai train would do that.
|
| Other than that isn't there in London a autonomous train? I
| remember riding that in 2005 or so
| bluGill wrote:
| Automated trains wouldn't do that because we can design
| signals so that they cannot be missed (that is if you don't
| have positive go/no-go you stop in time)
|
| Automated trains do have difficulties, but they are very
| different from the ones you see with human drivers.
| Closi wrote:
| The DLR is semi-autonomous. It has the ability to act
| autonomously, but it must be started with a button and has an
| attendant on-board that also fulfills other duties and can be
| there in the case of an incident.
| rpadovani wrote:
| Indeed, it has a grade of automation of 3 (out of 4), so it
| is driverless, but not unattended (as that is level 4)
| iggldiggl wrote:
| According to this article
| (https://railinsider.co.uk/2020/10/27/making-london-
| undergrou...), it occasionally has to even fall back to
| effectively level 2 operation (i.e. operator _at the
| front_ of the train) because increased passenger usage
| makes level 3 operation as originally built (no platform
| edge doors or obstacle detection systems) unsafe at
| certain stations during peak times.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| The DLR (Docklands Light Railway) is autonomous, but it's a
| pretty slow light rail system.
|
| I think that automation is possible because it was built de
| novo and doesn't interface with the rest of the rail network.
| drorco wrote:
| There are self-driving trains:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_system...
| rpadovani wrote:
| Actually, there are plenty of autonomous trains:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_system...
|
| The problem is automatizing the existing infrastructure, 'cause
| it requires great effort (so, money and inconveniences).
|
| I don't think however that the lessons there are applicable to
| cars as well, and while I think we could and should invest a
| lot on train systems, the final goal for cars should be
| reducing them, not replacing them with autonomous systems.
| _delirium wrote:
| The problem of automating trains is easier, but train labor
| requirements are already very low compared to truck
| requirements, so there isn't much of a win there. A typical
| freight train has a 2-person crew carrying 200+ TEU containers.
| Animats wrote:
| It's been done for trains. But they're already down to one
| person for a huge train, so the payoff isn't huge.
| badpun wrote:
| > It's been done for trains
|
| Has it been done on anything more complex than 100%
| underground subway line with the train just going back and
| forth?
| Chirono wrote:
| Yes, the DLR in London has goes overground and has run
| without drivers since the 80s.
| awuji wrote:
| I have talked to somebody in the SBB R&D department recently
| about this and the problem is actually that there has to be
| at least one person on the train.
|
| Imagine a door gets jammed or there are some problematic
| passengers. If there is someone on board they can fix the
| problem in a couple minutes. But on a completely automated
| train there is no one on board to fix the problem. One
| solution would be that you send out crews to arrive at
| smaller stations and fix the issue, and larger stations could
| have dedicated people, but that is already more investment
| and less efficient than just having someone on board.
|
| Retrofitting automation for a train network in a wealthy
| country like Switzerland wouldn't be a big problem, but it
| just makes more sense to leave the driver in there.
| Accordingly, SBB is investing much more into driver
| augmentation to help the drivers drive as efficiently,
| safely, and consistently as possible.
| jhy wrote:
| And that one driver now carries all the responsibility. To
| automate them out, you need 100% accuracy which closes in on
| impossible to achieve. Any lack of perfection would be down
| to the automator. So it's a very scary piece to take on when
| there's no human in the loop left to hold the bag when
| something goes wrong.
| bluGill wrote:
| Computers are more accurate than humans in a number of the
| things that matter for trains.
|
| As the other poster said, the main need for humans is to
| fix mechanical problems. If the door jams, unjam it (why
| can't passengers use a different door or figure out how to
| unjam it>) If someone is having a heart attack do CPR until
| medical crew arrives, then stop the train until the medical
| crew is off (central dispatch can teach anyone CPR over the
| phone and stop the train). If someone is attacked - stop
| the the attack (unless you are a trained police office you
| will probably make the situation worse trying to stop an
| attack)
|
| In short there actually isn't that much that a human can do
| that a computer cannot do better.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > To automate them out, you need 100% accuracy which closes
| in on impossible to achieve.
|
| I don't follow. As Animats indicated, there are already
| plenty of autonomous trains that work fine.
| Gare wrote:
| Those are usually "closed" systems, that don't have to
| deal with unpredictable events that often.
| edrxty wrote:
| And in non closed systems the set of problems that
| prevent fully autonomous cars is the same set of problems
| that prevens fully autonomous trains, ie, recognizing
| shit getting into the lane of travel but not panic
| braking for random trash.
| bluGill wrote:
| If there is something on the track the only option is
| hitting it. You cannot switch track (even if there is a
| switch on the tracks, it can't safely operate in time)
| You can hit the brakes, but your braking distance is so
| long that you won't be able to slow down much before you
| hit it.
| touch_abs wrote:
| They exist, many new lines or expansions are highly automated.
| Retrofits are hard for two sets of reasons:
|
| Political: union strikes (meaning if you want to automate a
| line you may have to accept it being closed for the duration)
| and public outcry over a reduction in jobs.
|
| Cost: You often only get the benefit of the simpler domain if
| you can implement the whole system from scratch, if you have to
| deal with the existing signalling, engines, (and human-driven
| trains) that's a complex problem, with massive capital outlay.
| pooper wrote:
| > Political: union strikes (meaning if you want to automate a
| line you may have to accept it being closed for the duration)
| and public outcry over a reduction in jobs.
|
| For local public transit subway (ny mta, path ny nj), I think
| the cost is worth it if it means fewer delays.
| bluGill wrote:
| Talk to your local politicians and demand it. This means
| changes in state laws as well to be less union friendly in
| cases where automation is replacing their jobs (I'm not
| saying that all union friendly laws need to go, but some
| specific ones)
| affgrff2 wrote:
| Even if it is technically solvable, don't underestimate the
| work to be done to comply with regulations. Some might even not
| be available yet, especially when talking about automatization
| with AI.
| divingdragon wrote:
| Railway is a different problem space than road vehicles. Trains
| run on fixed tracks, has long braking distance, are much
| heavier, and accidents can be much more devastating. While
| self-driving cars may use cameras, lidar and radar for
| detection and brake on sight, trains need to know exactly how
| far they are allowed to go and what speed restrictions are
| ahead in order to brake in time.
|
| Traditional lineside signals and signs do give enough
| information to drive a train by a computer, but the rail
| industry has already chosen decades ago to integrate signalling
| and automation with the infrastructure, which is a completely
| different approach than today's self-driving cars. As a result,
| heavy rail and metro trains will not be "self-driving" in the
| same way as self-driving cars.
|
| Now, if you say trams that run on streets, then possibly. Trams
| are often driven by sight and has stronger braking so it is
| possible to apply the same principles from self-driving cars.
| In fact, Siemens has been developing and testing one such tram.
| [1] Though I think the problem space is very similar to self-
| driving cars. There is no steering, but it still has to handle
| pedestrians and other road traffic.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.mobility.siemens.com/global/en/portfolio/rail/ro...
| th3sly wrote:
| We have them, but on a smaller scale, on airports like Munchen
| or Singapore
| Theodores wrote:
| As I read the article I keep thinking of trains and how two steel
| rails solve the autonomous driving problem in a way that AI
| cannot beat.
| m463 wrote:
| I'm just surprised that most trucks don't have backup cameras.
| smilekzs wrote:
| Where would you install them?
|
| - Back of the day cab? You may as well look out of the window.
| Even then the following point applies (somewhat).
|
| - Back of the sleeper? What are you looking at, front of the
| dry van / reefer I guess? Hardly useful that way...
|
| - Back of the trailer? The trailer might not even be yours. I
| guess you could make a kit that clips onto the door handle or
| bumper? But then you'd be looking at... the dock gate, most of
| the time. Again, not very useful.
|
| This can go on and on, but I think what you really want is a
| drone directly overhead.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| > Back of the trailer? The trailer might not even be yours.
|
| This is easy. Just put an Ethernet connector between the
| truck and the cab and put a "security camera" on the trailer.
| The only part of this that we don't have already is the
| Ethernet connector which is currently going through ISO to
| get a standard connector: it needs to not vibrate loose, but
| still break away if the trailer comes unhooked (in particular
| when the driver forgets to disconnect it while disconnecting
| the trailer)
|
| I put security camera in quotes because you need something a
| little more robust that the camera you buy at best buy. This
| is the case, and maybe the lens, mostly it is the same thing.
| in any case you can buy these off the shelf today, but the
| truck/trailer connector won't be compatible with one from a
| different manufacture.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| All that is needed is a regulation that says that all new
| vehicles must have it. There is no technological problem in
| doing it that cannot be solved with today's technology.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Great and detailed article. I agree with the comment from
| balaselvam though. On the way towards full autonomy (whenever
| that might be achieved) you will get there incrementally (like
| Tesla is trying to do, their constant delays/promises
| notwithstanding). At some point highway driving will be ok, but
| even for highway driving it is absolutely imperative to have a
| very good understanding of how to drive, the level of autonomy
| needs to be quite advanced. Otherwise you can quickly end up in a
| situation where unforeseen traffic guidance, debris, loss of
| communication will result in a situation where the truck does not
| react well enough.
|
| I doubt it is really possible to design a system for 'just'
| highway driving of such high quality that no intervention is
| required within the reaction time of a remote operator without
| actually trying to fully solve it. This could be limited to
| highways of course, but a loss of connection in city regions
| would then automatically mean the truck would have to stop where
| it is (in the middle of the road with hazards on)
|
| I do like the remote operator scenario for start and end quite a
| lot though as it would ease the incremental inclusion of autonomy
| into the truck economy and offer higher safety with machines this
| big.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| And then they went bust.[1] Because their slow-growth business
| model and the VC model didn't fit.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-
| starsky-...
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| I don't understand why vC's would think this way:
|
| "While this is a lower margin business than software's
| traditional 90%, we expected to be able to get to a 50% margin
| in time.
|
| It took me way too long to realize that VCs would rather a $1b
| business with a 90% margin than a $5b business with a 50%
| margin, even if capital requirements and growth were the same.
|
| And growth would be the same. The biggest limiter of autonomous
| deployments isn't sales, it's safety."
|
| In either case, returns are gated on fleet deployments, and the
| teleoperator approach seems more likely to deploy sooner at
| scale. Is it that VC's in this case were not investing in
| logistics, but in AI?
| ggm wrote:
| You're treating VC's as rational economic entities with only
| money at play. VCs have personal interest, and sometimes have
| other stake in the situation. If your background is coal
| mining, and you are a VC who also holds significant stake in
| coal mines, you are very likely to fund CCS ventures with
| high risk for reasons which do not equate directly to the ROI
| inherent in that specific CCS venture and its future share
| worth.
|
| See Twiggy Forrest and Mike Cannon Brookes. They're investing
| in solar to power a long-line HVDC feed from NT Australia to
| Singapore, and Forrest is funding H2 plants in Gladstone, Qld
| Australia to supply a future Hydrogen market which doesn't
| yet exist. Why? because they WANT TO.
|
| "oh, if you want to, then you aren't a VC" .. sorry, its not
| always just about the money.
| O__________O wrote:
| Believe concept you're missing is Opportunity Cost:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
|
| You cannot say all things are equal, then x5 the total
| revenue of a company with significantly lower margins and say
| you're comparing apples to apples.
|
| Like to like comparison would be six companies each making
| one billion of which half have a 90% margin, other half
| having a 50% margin. If you only have the capital to invest
| in three, which would you pick, assuming all other factors
| were identical?
| kuhewa wrote:
| Capital requirements are the same in the hypothetical
| O__________O wrote:
| Capital requirements in this context are the funds
| required to reach profit. If both companies are the same
| except for profit margins, the 90% margin company would
| reach profits sooner that the 50% margin company. In my
| opinion, odds they would have the same capital
| requirements to me sounds like magical thinking.
|
| That said, even if the 50% margin reaches 5 billion in
| revenue, in theory cash flow might be more that the one
| billion in revenue company over a long period, but VC
| invest to flip investments, not for cash flow.
| [deleted]
| redwood wrote:
| That math doesn't add up. If growth were truly the same many
| would prefer the more than 2x gross profit dollars. However
| in many cases the growth profile is different between such
| different models
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| That's really sad, because it's a good idea, trucking has a
| massive labor crisis for all the reasons they detailed (only
| paid for hauling, not waiting, combined with the race to the
| bottom in transport pricing where independent truckers and
| trucking firms both are cutting their own throats to win
| contracts).
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yeah, the broking model is responsible for the trucking
| shortage. You start paying for trucker time at
| origin/destination, and the supply chain would become a whole
| lot more efficient, and trucking wouldn't be (as) terrible a
| job.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Hmm I wish people would stop saying AI is "just pattern
| matching". I think it's pretty clear that a) state of the art
| LLMs have gone well beyond basic pattern matching and b)
| there's no fundamental reason (that anyone knows of) to believe
| that humans aren't "just pattern matching".
|
| I mean I don't think we'll have fully autonomous vehicles using
| AI for a very long time because it basically requires strong
| AI... But it also doesn't seem like research is especially
| stalled.
| bschne wrote:
| Aside: I love this kind of break-down of the low-level economics
| of a certain industry/business. Does anyone have any good
| references for others?
| ThePadawan wrote:
| > The truck then drives itself on the highway to another hub near
| its destination where another human driver completes the trip.
| This works in multiple ways - it allows human drivers to deal
| with the hard part of automation while also avoiding the terrible
| away from home lifestyle, and it allows you to have dedicated
| autonomous trucks for on-highway separate from your human-driven
| fleet (you can swap the trailers instead of using the same cab).
| You'll see these hubs start cropping up in a couple years.
|
| That makes sense, but just sounds like a worse version of freight
| trains to me.
|
| (Edit: This didn't reply to the correct comment)
| LightRailTycoon wrote:
| The "advantage" is that we all get to pay for the rails instead
| of just the railways.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Just not needing to deal with "the railroad" would be a huge
| plus all else being equal. They're like the DMV of shipping.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Well written and very detailed. However, it's only focused on the
| effects of autonomy on currently operating manned fleets. The
| real question is what a new business will look like surrounding
| autonomous trucks. Autonomous vehicles aren't built to convert
| businesses - they're built for safety, convenience, and for
| businesses we haven't seen yet.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Sounds like trucking companies should build a network of well
| located cheap rooming houses for overnight stays for truckers and
| scrap overnight cabs. They could even put them next to fuel stops
| and open the eateries to the public. They could be called truck
| stops.
| eschluntz wrote:
| I'm curious - after Starsky shut down, who else is actively
| working on autonomous (or at least remote) trucking?
| freemint wrote:
| Daimler Truck https://northamerica.daimlertruck.com/autonomous/
| mainframed wrote:
| Volvo Trucks
| defrost wrote:
| Rio Tinto - operating remote trucks since 2015
|
| > Mining giant Rio Tinto is running pits at its Yandicoogina
| and Nammuldi mine sites, with workers controlling the
| driverless trucks largely from an operations centre in Perth,
| 1,200 kilometres away.
|
| > Josh Bennett manages the mining operations at Yandicoogina
| mine north west of Newman and is closely involved with running
| 22 driverless trucks on the site.
|
| That was then and much has happened since.
|
| > In 2018, each truck was estimated to have operated on average
| 700 hours more than conventional haul trucks, with 15% lower
| costs - delivering clear productivity benefits. They also take
| truck operators out of harm's way, reducing the risks
| associated with working around heavy machinery.
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/rio-tinto-opens-
| world...
|
| [2] https://www.riotinto.com/en/about/innovation/automation
| wilg wrote:
| In theory, Tesla.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| Lots - Waymo, TuSimple, and Aurora are the top three IMO.
| bobsomers wrote:
| Meanwhile, at TuSimple:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymD8_DGwP50
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Autonomous driving is like alphago/alpha zero: without the
| algorithms it's really hard to solve, but when the algorithms are
| ready and mature, it will be easy to do and open source.
|
| So far the biggest winners are companies outsourcing the time of
| being ready to retailers: Tesla and Comma.AI
| BartjeD wrote:
| I believe the conclusion that ROI is poor is misleading:
|
| Imagine a new truck company created by one or more tech giants.
| A) Using state of the art tech. B) Assuming mostly full autonomy.
| C) Factor in the cost savings.
|
| Conclusion is this company would very largely outperform
| traditional trucking companies in terms of profitability. And it
| would be extremely scalable.
|
| If that holds then it follows that autonomy is simply the last
| component necessary to be able to disrupt the trucking industry
| as is.
|
| The real question is to what degree autonomy is needed to be able
| to start doing this.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Single player monopoly scenario does look good.
|
| But I always consider at least 3 or maybe even more players.
| Each invest huge amount of money. Now there is oversupply. They
| must get at least some of this back. Thus they start to compete
| with prices. Eventually they end up with pretty slim profit
| margins.
| BartjeD wrote:
| And in the process they push out all older trucking
| companies. Essentially monopolizing the market until the next
| disruption happens.
| metadat wrote:
| Uber Freight has already been working on this _for years_.
|
| https://www.uber.com/us/en/freight/
|
| (p.s. not an endorsement, I'm personally not a fan of Uber due
| to their tendency to play the role of Bad-Actor against both
| their gig-economy workers and customers, even seeking out and
| leveraging political corruption. Really low standards for
| ethical code of conduct.)
| lazide wrote:
| So if we assume the math checks out, the math checks out? Huh?
|
| Autonomous trucks only have a chance if cash is dirt cheap,
| maintenance on the equipment is low, but labor is very
| expensive.
|
| Which... isn't what is happening now or likely for awhile.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| But the math does check out:
|
| - truck new: $150,000
|
| - cost of electronics: $50,000
|
| - maintenance: $10,000/yr (over non-automated)
|
| - efficiency factor: 2x
|
| - wages saved: $75,000/yr
|
| So putting it together:
|
| $200,000 setup but $65,000/yr saved, before counting
| efficiency. Adding in that drivers can only drive 11/24 hours
| (legally), you get $130,000/yr saved and drop your initial
| capital outlay in half.
|
| Automated trucks pay for themselves in just a few years -- if
| not immediately, due to cutting your fleet in half.
| jfim wrote:
| That's assuming that there's zero R&D.
|
| In practice, the fixed costs of R&D in the AV space are
| pretty large. If for example it takes 500 engineers that
| cost 250k per year to make the trucks self driving, then
| you're spending 125M per year just in engineer salaries.
| That's of course excluding any of the costs spent on things
| like data storage (cameras and lidars generate a ton of
| data), compute (ML eats a ton of processing), data
| labeling, mapping, vehicle testing, fleet management,
| regulatory compliance, etc.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Sure -- it's looking at the unit cost.
|
| There are 2M semi-trucks in the US, so if half are
| automated (1M), you can spend $1B per year for $1k per
| truck per year. Which doesn't substantially change my
| calculations. That's my point: the unit costs are so
| ridiculously good that pulling $10k/yr in tech overhead,
| or $10B/yr total, you'd still come out ahead in 5 years.
|
| Phrased another way: we can spend $100B across a decade
| to develop automated trucking, and the consequence would
| be our automated trucks break even in three to five years
| instead of two to three years, after amortizing the R+D.
|
| I didn't assess the operations because I couldn't find a
| good metric on how much that costs now - and hand waved
| fleet maintenance, testing, regulation, etc as
| approximately the cost of the current burdens for those
| things.
| jfim wrote:
| Oh, I agree with you, the numbers are mind boggling. Just
| in the US, there are 3 trillion miles driven per year, so
| even capturing a small part of that (be it through
| automating long haul trucking, goods delivery, or
| robotaxi applications) and getting any kind of per
| mile/per hour revenue makes some pretty large numbers.
|
| It's just that the AV players absolutely need to operate
| at scale, as their fixed costs are really high compared
| to a traditional trucking company.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I'm not sure that R+D needs to be at the operator versus
| manufacturer level. For instance, manufacturers not
| operators bear the R+D cost of better diesel engines.
|
| You can retain (relatively) small fleets if the
| manufacturer is amortizing the cost of technology across
| vehicles sold.
| jfim wrote:
| It really depends on whether the AV companies decide to
| focus purely on manufacturing and developing AVs as a
| product (profit at the point of sale), offer them as a
| service (similar to "power by the hour" in aerospace), or
| decide to become robotaxi/truck fleet operators to
| capture more profit.
| leereeves wrote:
| Remote drivers could also drive 24/7, in shifts.
| smcl wrote:
| You're assuming that L4 is possible and that this
| incredible technology would be available for merely $200k
| per truck. I can't fault your optimism, but I think this
| might be a little out of step with reality.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| What would make that impractical?
|
| We're talking a rack of GPUs for $50k. Nothing about the
| problem suggests that automated driving can't be done
| with a rack of GPUs per vehicle.
|
| We have tractors self-driving and doing real-time
| analysis on a field of view to decide how to treat plants
| with a _lot_ less compute than that.
| smcl wrote:
| This isn't just about the cost of a rack of GPUs. I think
| you're severely underestimating the difficulty of self-
| driving, it's still not certain that we'll safely and
| reliably make autonomous, self-driving cars and trucks.
| And the cost in R&D to make such a breakthrough, assuming
| it is possible, is a complete unknown.
|
| Slapping an extra $50k on the sticker price of an average
| truck (which is what I think we both googled to discover
| it's $150k) and doing some rudimentary maths doesn't
| result in an answer to the question of whether self-
| driving trucks are possible, affordable or practical. It
| just tells you whether some finger-in-the-air numbers you
| selected sum to >0.
| Thlom wrote:
| Seems like everyone have completely forgotten everything
| else a trucker does except driving the damn truck on the
| highway. They assist with loading and unloading the
| goods, make sure the goods are adequately stacked and
| strapped and obeying laws and regulations (at least in my
| country truckers must have a bunch of certificates to be
| allowed to transport dangerous goods), handle paper work
| (this is probably the easiest problem to solve) and
| probably a lot of other stuff I know nothing about. In
| addition to automating the driving, you must offload
| these activities to warehouse workers and others who
| ship/receive goods.
|
| The autonomous truck also have to be able to handle all
| kinds of tight and busy city streets, badly thought out
| warehouse terminals and a million other things that is an
| annoyance for a trucker but a huge problem to automate.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I had a mental model of trucks going from waiting lot to
| waiting lot on the freeway, and going the last couple
| miles either by switching cabs or having local drivers
| take over.
|
| I think you reduce a lot of the challenge with freeway-
| only driving between large staging lots adjacent to
| industrial areas and allowing humans to do the "hard"
| part of the first + final mile.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| You can see the parallel thread about R+D and if that
| makes it unaffordable:
|
| Amortized, the answer seems to be that trucks would
| remain affordable -- even at the $100B to $1T cost to
| develop.
|
| > It just tells you whether some finger-in-the-air
| numbers you selected sum to >0.
|
| Estimating the unit economics and R+D amortized cost (as
| I did) is more reliable than going based purely on your
| feelings -- as you have done.
|
| I'd appreciate if you would make specific criticisms
| about my model, rather than tell me how you feel about
| the topic.
| smcl wrote:
| Thing is I don't think there's a fact-based argument in
| favour or against either position right now.
|
| You _feel_ that self-driving trucks will be solved with a
| $100b-$1tn investment
|
| I _feel_ like that simply won't happen.
|
| That's really what this boils down to. It's ok to fall
| back on gut-feel on these issues, don't let guys like Ben
| Shapiro tell you otherwise :-)
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Well, no.
|
| The difference is that we can look at other R+D of
| technologies (which cost less than that), the rate of
| autonomous piloting in drones and cars, and have
| reasonable idea that $100B-$1T over a decade will allow
| us to reach the level of freeway driving for trucks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
|
| https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/self-driving-car-trial-
| lau...
|
| There are already most of the key components -- and we're
| ball-parking (on the high side) what that will cost to
| productize.
|
| You haven't presented any basis for why you think that
| won't happen, other than you just don't like it.
|
| I understand you want estimates based on existing
| technologies and unit prices to be the same as your gut
| feeling -- but they're not.
| stevehawk wrote:
| those tractors don't have to avoid other vehicles or
| pedestrians, they don't have to obey traffic laws, they
| don't have to be on the lookout for road maintenance,
| closures, detours, etc.
|
| that's not even close to a fair comparison.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| And they have a driver in the cab to take over whenever
| something goes wrong.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I work with two companies developing true autonomous trucks and
| the conclusions in this article are dated and not accurate in
| light of the bigger picture.
|
| 1) The model most are working toward is "hub to hub" not point to
| point. As in, A human driver drives the truck from the warehouse
| or port to a hub on the highway outside the city surface streets.
| Then they get out of the truck and pick up another one that needs
| to go back into the city. The truck then drives itself on the
| highway to another hub near its destination where another human
| driver completes the trip. This works in multiple ways - it
| allows human drivers to deal with the hard part of automation
| while also avoiding the terrible away from home lifestyle, and it
| allows you to have dedicated autonomous trucks for on-highway
| separate from your human-driven fleet (you can swap the trailers
| instead of using the same cab). You'll see these hubs start
| cropping up in a couple years.
|
| 2) On-highway autonomy is not that far away anymore. It's
| definitely not a "next year" thing, but mid-late decade is a near
| certainty based on the current state of the tech. That's a long
| time for people used to software, but not a long time compared to
| the lifecycle of a truck.
|
| 3) There seems to be an implicit assumption in this write-up that
| autonomous systems will remain horribly expensive, which isn't
| true. They're expensive today because each generation of
| development is effectively custom built in small quantities. Just
| like Starsky said their camera system would drop in price with
| scale, a "ready for production" generation of autonomous driving
| kit in a few years will likely be close to 1/3 the current kit
| cost, which has very large impacts on the total ROI calculation.
|
| I don't want to make it sound like there aren't big challenges
| left to solve - there are - but there's also a reason so much
| investment money has flowed into this space. The ROI does make
| sense, just not on the original hype-cycle timeline that a lot of
| people reported.
| pungentcomment wrote:
| Trucker with a CS degree here. I'm very skeptical of the
| feasibility of autonomous highway trucks that can drive outside
| very tightly defined parameters or ideal situations. That being
| said, it just occurred to me, how will these trucks react to or
| let alone detect tire blowouts or break failures/fires on the
| trailers?
|
| Edit: I know from experience that getting a project to what we
| think is 95% there is relatively easy compared to the last 5%
| that make the product/project 100% viable. The real life
| testing will kill you if the edge cases don't. (I don't mean
| that literally, although...)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Side question - mind sharing a bit about your story? Some
| questions popped immediately to mind when I read your
| comment:
|
| Which came first? Trucking or the CS degree?
|
| Why trucking if you have the degree required to get a job
| sitting behind a computer vs sitting behind the wheel?
|
| What're your general thoughts about the two industries/jobs?
| pungentcomment wrote:
| CS came first. At the end I had a small internet business
| at home that chained me to the computers. An alarm about a
| defective RAID just as I was starting a short vacation
| triggered the career change. I couldn't see myself go back
| into a cubicle and I always liked to drive so I decided on
| the spot to become a trucker. So I sold the business, took
| a course, pass the license and here I am 15 years later,
| 100 pounds lighter because I'm no longer behind a desk
| getting fat. I'm doing local and regional deliveries with a
| 53ft and have a 20km bike commute. I probably make 1/3 of
| what a computer job would pay but to me money is not
| everything. To tell the whole truth, I was simply burned
| out. I just came back to programming on personal projects
| just a couple of years ago and I love it.
|
| As for comparing industries, I don't know, how can you
| compare when one has really small margins, has no
| technology besides tracking and logistics, is really change
| averse and has basically an un-educated cheap labor force
| and the other has hopefully good margins, a well paid
| skilled labor force and creates technology.
|
| One thing for sure, a good or a bad boss is the same in
| both industries lol.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yeah, and what about theft? If the truck is programmed to
| stop if there's a person in front (one would hope so), then
| how can you stop thieves lifting the whole thing?
| bglazer wrote:
| How is that prevented now? Also, a relatively common form
| of theft now is the human driver absconding with the
| trailer. Also, a self driving truck would presumably be
| generating high resolution 3d scans of any potential
| hijacker.
| disconcision wrote:
| >high resolution 3d scans of any potential hijacker.
|
| Hijackers will be 3d printed and their facsimiles
| imprisoned
| serf wrote:
| >How is that prevented now?
|
| people are generally a lot less brazen towards other
| humans compared to how they interact with automations or
| things that are remotely surveilled rather than with a
| human attendant.
|
| trains with unarmed guards generally don't get robbed.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Just curious are there any sensors built into the road that
| would help to speed this along.
| cbdumas wrote:
| > The model most are working toward is "hub to hub" not point
| to point. As in, A human driver drives the truck from the
| warehouse or port to a hub on the highway outside the city
| surface streets. Then they get out of the truck and pick up
| another one that needs to go back into the city.
|
| What's the competitive advantage of this setup over a train?
| mdorazio wrote:
| The thing about trains is that they gain cost efficiency in
| exchange for a massive time penalty. In most cases, you have
| to truck your goods from a warehouse to a rail center, unload
| them from the trailer to a rail car, wait for the entire
| train to be loaded and prepped, wait for a slot on the rail
| network, travel at normally ~45mph, and then do the reverse
| at the destination rail center. A trucking hub can swap a
| trailer in maybe 10 minutes and there's no need to group
| shipments together - you can send a single trailer load of
| stuff from point A to point B with minimal interruptions just
| like with a normal truck today.
| michaelt wrote:
| I agree that's a concern from an investor's perspective. But:
|
| 1. You benefit from the massive subsidy America provides for
| road transport
|
| 2. You can serve places that don't have good rail connections
|
| 3. If you're moving standard trailers, your 'hubs' don't need
| costly build-out like cranes. Your MVP hub is just a car park
| - or maybe even just a quiet side street. So you can serve a
| town that needs 2 trucks/week, instead of only being able to
| serve towns that need 40 trucks/week.
| algo_trader wrote:
| I agree with your analysis.
|
| Autonomy also dove-tails very well with the inevitable
| electrification (reduced maintenance, higher up time, higher
| capex lower opex, etc)
|
| DO you have any opinions on etrucks-battery-swapping?
| mattferderer wrote:
| Not my area but seems like if you swab cabs you would be able
| to keep your fleet either on the road or charging & getting
| maintenance.
|
| > The charge time offers time for maintenance & switching
| trailers
|
| > Charge times keep dropping & miles per charge keep
| increasing
|
| > Batteries currently make up almost half the price of a car.
| Battery prices are dropping though. Not sure about cab
| prices. Also these cabs might be very cheap without human
| comforts in comparison to the battery, so if battery ends up
| being bulk of cost, you might gain little value there.
|
| Anyways just 2 random cents from someone who finds interest
| in this but doesn't actually know anything.
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| I think this point is key "Those margins would jump to 58% if
| that remote driver only needed to pay attention for the first
| and last miles." - if you're going for #1 you still have a
| human in the loop for the first and last mile. If I understand
| the original post correctly (and I may not be), going from
| human in the loop at beginning and end-of-trip to no human in
| the loop at all is where the ROI vanishes
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| Remotely-driven trucks sounds terrifying.
| aliyeysides wrote:
| I used to own an OTR trucking company. The biggest issue for us
| other than finding drivers like the article mentions were the
| FMSCA regulations around the duration a driver is permitted to
| drive on a given day. We would be forced to stop a few miles
| short of a dropoff location because the driver ran out of driving
| time and was forced to enter the sleeping berth to rest.
| Companies like Amazon solve for this by driving in teams of two
| per truck so you can swap drivers, but finding even a single
| driver for us was a challenge. I'm curious what the current state
| of regulations say for autonomous trucks. If they are not capped
| on drive time then that alone would be a huge win for companies.
| bsder wrote:
| The one thing I don't understand is: "Why don't we make all
| trucking semi-local?"
|
| It would seem with modern automation that you could place relay
| stations at roughly 250 mile spacings so a driver can pick up a
| trailer near home, drive 4 hours out, drop off trailer, pick up
| new one, drive 4 hours back home, drop off trailer, and go home.
|
| This seems like a _much_ easier nut to crack than autonomous
| driving. Real estate in a lot of flyover country in America is
| really cheap. And it has other advantages like gasoline and
| service are at specified points. Basically, treat trailers like
| IP packets.
|
| What am I missing? (I suspect some sort of CapEx/OpEx accounting
| tomfoolery that means everybody wants _everybody else_ to take
| the risk of actually owning things.)
| danohuiginn wrote:
| There seem to be a few companies with this model, e.g.
| https://en.trucksters.io/
| bluGill wrote:
| Trucking isn't always symmetrical. If your current drivers are
| mostly doing City A to city B to city C, then you need a lot
| more drivers and half of the time they run empty going back and
| forth.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| We have had this ability for years and refuse to properly
| expand it. Stick everything over say 50-100 miles on train.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Part of the justification for the insane expense of the
| interstate highway system (besides the dubious defense
| benefits) was that it would act as a check on usurious rates
| by the railroads. Yes, we could just regulate or nationalize
| the railroads (that the public largely created via huge land
| giveaways and other benefits) but it's more American to
| counter the flaws of one big business welfare program with
| another: subsidizing auto infrastructure as a giveaway to
| Detroit and the oil companies.
| ludston wrote:
| You're missing the points of failure and the complexity of
| dealing with them. If the truck supposed to be servicing one
| leg of the journey has a breakdown, or the driver goes on sick
| leave, suddenly every container that was to pass via that leg
| is now stuck. Instead of having 1 spare long haul truck that
| can do the full journey, you have to have a spare truck per leg
| (Or you have to send your redundant truck on a long-haul drive
| to replace the broken truck, and then have them work overtime
| to catch up with the backlog of containers)
|
| You also lose throughput by introducing potential handover
| delays. You end up with a bloated admin that is continuously
| having to fix a shifting constraint as certain legs become
| bottlenecks, etc.
| mainframed wrote:
| Great article, but I think the conclusion is a bit off. We also
| need more research into autonomous driving, to be able to drive
| trucks safely on highways. And automating that part you see as
| highly profitable. So, if anything, the article shows how
| important more research into this topic is, especially if we
| would factor in the two disproved assumptions, you mention in the
| last section.
|
| Second, I think it is a bit naive to think that truck
| manufacturers/tech companies will just sell trucks for a similar
| fix price to traditional trucking companies. I think they will
| either
|
| - lease them at an expensive rate (getting most of the additional
| margin, since they also deliver the value)
|
| - offer them as a service, such that trucking companies only
| manage contracts (also expensive)
|
| - found their own new companies or buy trucking companies to
| handle the contracts
| atoav wrote:
| One thing that seems off to me about autonomous trucking is the
| following:
|
| Imagine a chain of autonomous trucks on a highway -- isn't this
| basically a less energy efficient, less capacity version of a
| _train_ that pushes a part of the costs onto public
| infrastructure?
|
| Granted, trucks can also cover the last and the first mile(s)
| with much more flexibility, but a well designed system that
| allows you to quickly move containers from trains to trucks and
| vice versa could do just that as well.
|
| Also: while this might not be as relevant within the US, on the
| rest of Earth truckers often also handle the customs at
| national borders and need to interact with certain laws. E.g.
| last week Bavaria, Germany banned trucks from taking non-
| highway routes to Austria. Not sure how an autonomous vehicle
| would honor this, or how police would be able to stop them. The
| mechanisms for doing all the things beyond just driving are
| just not there.
| rocqua wrote:
| It's a train with much more flexibility and track re-use.
|
| - You dan easily split of part of your convoy at any time.
|
| - You can run convoys much closer together because the
| breaking distance is much better.
|
| - your infrastructuur is re-usable by the general public.
|
| - A single convoy breakdown doesn't completely block the
| tracks for other convoys. (Put differently, every location is
| an overtaking location)
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I had the same thought.
|
| I think a big reason why trains aren't used more (and why
| highway trucking is booming) is because the industry is
| sclerotic. In the US at least, it is one of the most
| conservative industries there is at all levels: regulators,
| companies, and workers. And because of the difficulty of
| switching, it's hard to incrementally innovate on the system.
|
| That said, there ARE companies innovating in this space. This
| seems like an obvious improvement on the status quo:
| https://moveparallel.com/
|
| With battery-electric systems (enabled by lithium-ion), there
| is no massive benefit from centralizing motive power in the
| locomotives (thermal engines gain a lot of efficiency by
| scaling up, electric systems can operate efficiently at any
| scale), so you can just have individual packet-switching-like
| rail cars. Containerization systems (such as cranes, etc)
| open up the trade space for switching payloads without
| requiring complex and land-intensive switching yards for
| everything.
|
| And there should be more room on the freight rail system as
| we decarbonize. Coal was 25% of rail volume in 2009 (much
| higher, if you go by total originated rail tonnage). There
| will be room on the railroads for more volume.
| bluGill wrote:
| That isn't actually clear. While trains claim they are the
| most efficient, they use measures like ton-mile that make
| them look much better. Trucks are often used for light things
| which means the ton-mile would go down. Trucks are often used
| for small loads, trains to all those different destinations
| with small loads would be less efficient. Sure steel wheels
| have less rolling resistance than rubber, but it isn't that
| much less. Long trains are more aerodynamic, but trucks
| already have a fair amount of length to spread that would
| over.
|
| As such it isn't clear how much more efficient trains would
| be in the real world of freight.
|
| Note that the above is about freight. Transporting humans as
| a number of different factors making the above inapplicable.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > Imagine a chain of autonomous trucks on a highway -- isn't
| this basically a less energy efficient, less capacity version
| of a train ...
|
| In principle, yes. And a train is basically a less energy
| efficient version of a barge or a ship. The trade-off lies
| obviously elsewhere (and is complex). Typical problems are
| loading and unloading goods (which is often quite slow, even
| when containers are used) and re-assembling trains en route
| when wagons have different destinations. B2B in bulk is were
| trains excell, such as deliviering coal from a mine to a
| power plant.
|
| > ... that pushes a part of the costs onto public
| infrastructure
|
| Only if trucks are not adequately charged via taxes and
| tolls. To get foreign trucks involved in financing the road
| network, many European countries have moved from pure tax-
| based systems (on petrol and the vehicle itself) to toll
| systems in recent years.
| freemint wrote:
| > Imagine a chain of autonomous trucks on a highway -- isn't
| this basically a less energy efficient, less capacity version
| of a train that pushes a part of the costs onto public
| infrastructure?
|
| Imagine a chain of autonomous trucks on a highway powered by
| overhead wires. https://www.openenlocc.net/editorial/
| hobofan wrote:
| > Not sure how an autonomous vehicle would honor this
|
| What? It's not like an autonomous vehicle is a 100% black box
| that you tell "go to point X" and everything after that it
| figures out itself. Of course it's based on traditional route
| planning and you can just tell that route planning to not
| consider banned roads.
| ghaff wrote:
| Intermodal logistics systems already use trains for quite a
| bit of the truly long distance travel in the US. (Probably
| less so in other areas.)
|
| To your other point, yes, people are still needed for various
| purposes in the transport process. And that's sort of the
| issue. If at the end of the day, you need people available at
| various points, trying to automate past maybe some of the
| long haul highway sections (which probably has safety etc.
| benefits as well) doesn't really buy you a lot. Elaborate
| schemes of depots at highway exits and so forth have clearly
| diminishing returns.
|
| You have similar but different considerations for
| automobiles. Unless you're truly going to have door to door
| in at least most conditions autonomy, automating long boring
| highway driving is really the big win even if it doesn't give
| urbanites in particular the personal chauffeur they want.
| rocqua wrote:
| If you can staff those few points close to where people
| live, that still has a massive potential impact on labour
| cost and employee retention.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Not sure how an autonomous vehicle would honor this.
|
| The company operating them tells their engineers to implement
| the change in the routing algorithm.
|
| > or how police would be able to stop them.
|
| By flashing their lights and pulling the autonomous truck
| over, just like they do with any normal vehicle.
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