This article future of transportationexplores the innovations and challenges that affect the way we move around the world.
In March, a self-driving 18-wheeler hauled goods between Dallas and Atlanta for more than five consecutive days. Driving around the clock, traveling over 6,300 miles and making four round trips, he delivered eight shipments.
result of a partnership between Kodiak Roboticsself-driving startups, and US Expressa traditional trucking company, this five-day drive demonstrated the enormous potential of autonomous trucks. It will take more than 10 days to deliver.
But Drive has also shown that the technology is not yet ready to realize its potential. I put the team in the cab of the truck. Many times these “safety drivers” got behind the wheel.
Tech startups like Kodiak have spent years building and testing self-driving trucks, and companies in the trucking industry want to reap the benefits. At a time when global supply chains struggle to deliver goods as efficiently as businesses and consumers now demand, autonomous trucks could ease bottlenecks and reduce costs.
In this quest to automate freight delivery, the hardest work begins. It’s about getting these trucks out on the road with no one behind the wheel.
Companies like Kodiak know the technology has a long way to go before trucks can drive themselves anywhere. So we are looking for ways to deploy self-driving trucks only on highways. This highway makes it easier to travel over long, uninterrupted sections than urban roads with heavy stop-and-go traffic.
“The highway is a more structured environment,” said Alex Rodriguez, CEO of self-driving truck startup Embark. “I know where all the cars are going. They’re in the lane. They’re heading in the same direction.”
Restricting these trucks to highways also plays to its strengths. “The biggest problems for long-haul truck drivers are fatigue, distraction, and boredom,” Rodriguez explained as his company’s trucks drove down the highways of Northern California on a recent afternoon. “Robots don’t have that problem.”
This is a solid strategy, but it also requires years of additional development.
Part of the challenge is technical. While self-driving trucks can handle most things that happen on highways (merging off ramps, changing lanes, slowing cars off the shoulder), companies are still struggling with less common situations such as: We are working to accommodate. A sudden pileup of 3 cars.
As he drove down the highway, Rodriguez said the company had yet to finalize what he said was a workaround. “If an accident occurs on the road directly in front of the vehicle, the vehicle must stop immediately,” he explained. For these reasons, most companies have no plans to remove Safety-His drivers from their trucks, at least until 2024. In many states, doing so would require explicit approval from regulators.
But deploying these trucks is also a logistical challenge, requiring major changes across the trucking industry.
In the round trip of goods between Dallas and Atlanta, Kodiak trucks did not drive into either city. I drove right off the highway to unload and refuel before heading home. Conventional trucks then received the cargo and drove the “last mile” or final leg of the delivery.
To deploy self-driving trucks at scale, companies must first build a network of these “transport hubs.” With this future in mind, Kodiak recently pilotis a company that operates traditional truck stops throughout the country. Today, these are places where truck drivers shower, rest and eat. It is also expected to function as a relay station for unmanned trucks.
Kodiak CEO Don Burnette said: “We have to find a way to work with the existing infrastructure.”
We also need to consider the impact on truck drivers. We aim to make long distance drivers obsolete, but we need more short distance drivers.
Executives like Barnett and Rodriguez believe drivers are happy to move on to other jobs. The turnover rate for long distance drivers is about 95%. This means that the average company replaces nearly all of its employees each year. It’s a stressful, monotonous job that keeps people away from home for days.
but, Recent research Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Michigan question whether the transition will go as smoothly as many hope. Truck drivers are usually paid in miles. Studies show that traveling less often means less miles traveled, which can lead to lower wages.
Indeed, some drivers worry that they won’t be able to make that much money just by driving in urban areas. Some people hate wasting time on the highway.
“There are a lot of drivers like me,” said Canon Bryan, 28, a long-distance truck driver from Texas. “I wasn’t born in the city. I wasn’t raised in the city. I hate city riding. I like picking up my bags in Dallas and driving to Grand Rapids, Michigan.”
Building and deploying self-driving trucks has never been easier. And it’s very expensive, on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. TuSimpleSelf-driving truck company faces concerns that its technology is unsafe after federal regulators revealed one of its trucks was involved in an accident. Aurora, a self-driving technology company with a particularly impressive pedigree, is facing difficult market conditions and has raised the possibility of a sale to big companies such as Apple and Microsoft, according to one person. Report from Bloomberg News.
If these companies can actually get drivers out of their cars, this creates new problems. How will driverless trucks handle on-road inspections? How do you set up a reflective triangle to warn other drivers? How do they deal with flat tires and repairs?
Eventually, the industry will also adopt electric trucks powered by batteries rather than fossil fuels. This will raise even more questions for autonomous trucking. Where and how will the battery be charged, won’t this prevent the self-driving truck from running his 24/7 as promised by the industry?
“There are a lot of problems that are much more complex than they appear on paper,” says Steve Viselli, an economic and political sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in trucking. and many of the questions about what needs to change are still unanswered. We need to see what reality looks like.”
Some are technical solutions, some are logistical solutions. His Embark, a start-up, plans to build a mobile workforce of “guardians” who will find trucks when they have problems and call them in for repairs when necessary.
The good news for the labor market is that this technology will create jobs even if it eliminates them. Experts say more jobs will eventually be lost than they are gained, but this won’t happen anytime soon. Long-haul truck drivers have years to prepare for their new lives. The rollout will be gradual.
“We’re still five years away from when we think the technology is nearly done,” said Tom Schmidt, chief executive of Forward Air, a shipping company that has just begun testing Kodiak self-driving trucks. says.