bcla
On our rugged Eastern foothills.....
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2012
Speaking as somebody who drives a Tesla and works in the automation field, I think we’ll see preliminary adoption much sooner than that. Five years ago the technology didn’t even exist, now it’s quite advanced and every mile driven by a Tesla (or any car with semi-autonomous driving capability) feeds the algorithms to make them better. And not just miles driven in “autopilot,” which I agree is currently ANYTHING BUT in the consumer-facing versions, but every mile driven the software is running in the background, learning and improving and improving the algorithms. Millions of miles a week, and soon millions of miles a day, are adding to the body of data. Autonomous driving is still safer than a human driving, and the economics of having a rig that can functionally run 24 hours a day are too good to pass up. Fully electric trucks may, in my opinion, come slower than fully autonomous cars, but in technology, twenty years is ten lifetimes (think Moore’s Law, for example) and barring regulatory opposition (possible because of the strong lobbies involved with the insurance, personal injury lawyers, labor unions, etc.) I think its widespread adoption is coming sooner than most people can fathom.The sensors that Tesla used initially are already generations behind in just a few years and the current ones are barely scratching the surface of the ones they have installed (I believe the current models use three of the twelve or more sensors, cameras, radars, etc. that are installed).
The biggest issue will still be range. Certainly I can imagine a lot of short-haul trucking being taken over by electrics. They're almost ideal for that use where they don't need transmissions and there's almost immediate low-rev torque to move big loads. But range will be the limitation for long-haul trucking - especially
I worked a college job in the shipping industry where my company dealt with a lot of short-haul (drayage) shipping. Our biggest vendor did short-haul transport of containers from container ports off of ships or trains to the customer. Our typical invoices were $80 or $100. They'd be idling for a while waiting for their loads and then typically moving them 10-30 miles. This was almost ideal for electric vehicles. I don't know if they could necessarily go without drivers though. Someone always have to take responsibility and sign for a load. I'm not sure that will ever change.