Are any of you worried about autonomous vehicles?

[frater secessus]

Will they give me more SS so I can go buy one?

It will likely be an Uber-style rental rather than ownership.  CRVL types excepted, most folks pay for a vehicle only to park it 23hrs a day with no benefit whatsoever.

 

[lenny flank]

There will be decades of changover.

They are not gonna kick all the driver-operated cars off the road.

 

[Seminole Wind]

Some electrification and autonomy is happening (we all know that) but cross-country trucking wont be part of that mix anytime soon.

gotta disagree there. cross country trucking will be one of the first. Tesla is already running their prototype electric semi. with a 500 mile range and sufficient charging stations it will very easily integrate into the world of long haul trucking. and going full autonomous will be much easier for the long haul fleet rather then inner city deliveries. there is a massive amount of long haul trucking that is already "drop and hook" where drivers just pick up trailers and then take them to their destination and drop them off at the yard. then in the yard they have other drivers in smaller tractors shuttle them around for unloading and loading. or another driver in a day cab takes them out for making deliveries. if automated uber and google cars can get around in the city while only running over a few old ladies pushing their bike across the street. then have an automated semi doing drop and hook while staying on the highways will be a piece of cake

 

[Seminole Wind]

when that happens i'll sit down and watch "The Last Chase" with you...

but i aint buying the dvd yet...

 

[Seminole Wind]

trailer for above

 

[Seminole Wind]

traffic signals are "synchronized" in many areas. but it only works if you and drive the speed limit. also in some areas the dont sync them to speed you on your way but instead sync them to slow you down so you can see whats for sale. wont get succered into stopping for a business if you sail right by at cruise speed

in other areas they cant be sync'd and are triggered by approaching traffic

 

[Seminole Wind]

in grants pass oregon, on the main drag 6/7th streets. if the traffic is light you can drive from one end of town to the other with out changing speed or having to stop at any of the lights. going a mile or 2 under the speed limit help there

 

[tx2sturgis]

gotta disagree there. cross country trucking will be one of the first. 

'Soon' was the operative word that I used.

It won't happen soon.

'Soon' to me, means in the next 1 to 10 years. If your definition is different, tell me what it is.

I GUARANTEE that fuel-powered (or hybrid), mostly human driven, class 8 trucks (hauling actual paying freight) will be around and hauling most of our country's freight for at least another 25-50 years.

Unless, as I said, a large rebuild of our existing infrastructure and artificial intelligence happens literally overnight.

You mentioned 'drop and hook'...well who or what will be unhooking the pigtails and winding the landing gear up and down at terminals and vendors and warehouses? Who will chain-up the tires to drive over snow-covered mountain passes? 

Perishable food products and just-in-time deliveries can NOT be delayed 4 days due to a fully automated electric truck that's too expensive and who's sensors are blinded by snow and ice and no visible lane markers to proceed. A human CAN drive that truck in those conditions. A human driver can 'decide' to get behind a snowplow and follow slowly until the conditions are better, or he (or she) can 'choose' to find the nearest 'safe-haven'.

And who will attend and guard hazmat loads? Who will tarp and strap the oversize loads? Who will poke and prod the cattle in the bull-wagons? Who will work the truck-car accident scene when something DOES happen out there? Who will be listening to the radio and seek out local info on how to navigate around accidents by taking the frontage roads?

Who will check the tires and do the required vehicle inspections as all those unattended CMVs cross the USA?

If you have not been employed in logistics and transportation, as I have, it might be hard to understand what all is required to get loads from point A to point B, in any kind of traffic, on every kind of road, thru any kind of weather, with and without mechanical troubles along the way.

Automated (or adaptive) cruise is one thing, I had some of that technology in my trucks. But complete replacement of the commercial driver will NOT happen, in a time frame we call 'soon'...

Unless by 'one of the first' you mean 50 years from now. And then it wont be 'one of the first'.

What IS happening is that the American consumers and investors are being 'sold a bill of goods'... because commercial interstate trucking will not be changed by Tesla Trucks, Nikola Trucks or any other electric automated experiments any time 'soon'. The range is currently (see what I did there?) too short for electric trucks, the charging time is too long, hours-long waits at charging stations for cross-country electric trucks would be a huge impediment to productivity, and the strain on the grid for fully recharging 10 million cross-country trucks every day would likely kill the power grid.

Experimental units are on the road now, true, but will not be replacing our massive fleet of interstate trucks any time 'soon'.

Diesel-Hybrid trucks and hybrid trucks using CNG, LNG, and hydrogen, might have a small chance, a VERY small chance, in certain segments of the truckload carrier industry.

Of course, I could be wrong. But in this case, I'm not.

 

[tx2sturgis]

And yes, I know about 'platooning' and V2I and V2V technologies, but again, they are not quite ready for 'primetime'....

 

[rm.w/aview]

Are any of you worried 
The first (Level 3) self-driving vehicle has already made the trip from New York to Los Angeles (all highway driving) safely, and without incident.

I recently read an article where the vehicle, while being first in line at a 4 way intersection, successfully identified or seen crossing traffic & pedestrians along with oncoming traffic, with the exception of the oncoming motorcycle.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Some thoughts on OP:

Go back 10, 20, or 30 years and see what futurists were predicting for 2020.  They are usually full of sh!t.

Do you think the unions are going to sit back and see jobs disappear?  We still have firemen in a train locomotive and haven't had a firebox in one in ~80 years.  It eliminates the savings on driverless cabs and trucks if you have to have a driver.

All it takes is one Hindenburg event, an accident or disaster that turns off the public to a new technology.

It will take a long time to upgrade the power grid to accommodate the additional demand of electric cars.  The power grid in the places where electric cars make the most sense are at capacity now.  And we just keep putting bandaids on it.

Average life of a new car today is 11.2 years and rising, probably because of the high cost of new.  If we forced every new car sold to be electric we wouldn't have saturation by 2019.

Governments pass laws and make regulations all the time that have little relation to reality.  They either are ignored or eventually rescinded.

What will non-ownership do to living in a vehicle and boondocking?

Do you want to live in a society that requires the consent of a third party to move about the country?

 

[Seminole Wind]

Tx2...

you are obviously projecting what you want to believe without acknowledging what is possible.

will all ice powered human driven semi's be gone from the highways in 10 years. very doubtful. it takes a long time to completely replace something. there are plenty of rigs out there still hauling freight that are much older than that.

tesla already has orders for hundreds if not thousands ( i believe i heard they had taken deposits on over 2000 electric semis and that was months ago ) when he sold his first tesla car there were not many dedicated charging stations. long distance travel was not that easy. now there are so many super charging stations with enough planning ( that the car does for you on the fly) you can travel coast to coast recharging during potty stops, lunch and such. a similar grid of charging stations for semis will be even easier to start. pick a heavily traveled route for long haul freight sell some trucks to companies that run that route and your started. it will only grow

You mentioned 'drop and hook'...well who or what will be unhooking the pigtails and winding the landing gear up and down at terminals and vendors and warehouses? Who will chain-up the tires to drive over snow-covered mountain passes?

is that all your worried about... lol

ever heard of a pit crew for lack of a better term. just like lumpers unload all the freight at many large warehouses there is no reason why it would not be extremely easy and efficient in the beginning to have a yard crew. when a truck pulls in and comes to a stop the crew steps up and does the unhook. automated truck pulls away and then backs up to another loaded trailer and the crew makes the connections and truck is on its way. then a driver with a yard dog hooks onto the dropped trailer and parks it in the yard till it is to be unloaded. not very far from what was happening in big yards 10 years ago when i got out


most of the rest of your head in the sand "arguments" are not all encompassing. snow? so dont run those trucks on those route carrying that time sensitive cargo.

tire pressure? are you serious? tire pressure can be easily monitored in real time with a couple sensor relayed right to the computer. mater of fact that very system is already in service on many new cars these days

daily inspection can be done by the pit crew when doing the drop and hook. and most of the aspects inspected can easily be done via readily available tech

there are millions of miles, probably hundreds of millions of miles that are run each year that dont have anything to do with your complaints. that is where electric autonomous truck will get there foothold. it is already happening tesla uses their electric semis to haul their batteries from the giga factory to the car plant from what i hear. while the trucks are not fully autonomous they are at least as sophisticated a as the tesla cars

as far as a bad wreck causing the general population to cry out in outrage and ban them. well what happened when that "driver" in that automated car that wasnt even looking ran down and killed that lady pushing her bike across the street. not much, and if you ask me, not enough.

yes some jobs will be replaced, tech has been replacing jobs for ages. it will keep going. when your ancestors (and mine) crawled out of the trees almost our entire life was dedicated to procuring sustenance and shelter but now massive portions of our waking hours are available to the average human for elective activities, education, entertainment or just sit around scratching ones balls. i guess that could be considered education or entertainment, for some maybe even both...

will we be living in the dystopian future of "The Last Chase" anytime soon? in the next ten years? very unlikely. but there will be a viable commercial fleet of highly autonomous electric class 8 trucks contributing to or economy soon, probably with in 5 years and then it will just continue to grow

you can stick your head in the sand and postulate any number of ridiculous arguments as to why it cant happen. if that makes you happy, then go ahead, but it wont stop it from happening

i'll wager you an electric robo truck on it...

 

[tx2sturgis]

Well written, and respect is due. But you missed (or avoided) some of my points concerning the near-term shake-up of the logistics and transportation industry.

My head is not in the sand, it's facing the impossibility of a complete conversion in the near term. 

As I said, there will be experiments, trials, media one-offs, maybe even some regional and local traffic lanes and delivery routes (where the truck returns to a domicile or 'home point' every day) that will be practical in some cases for electric and/or autonomous trucks, but my expectation is that eventually technology wont replace truck drivers, but that it will likely shift some of them to other duties. The OP posted that truck drivers are 'worried'...I can assure you both, most of them are not. 

Big rig drivers, taxi drivers, and all other professionals drivers *are* worried.

If a young person of say 20 years old said they wanted to be a carreer truck driver (which never happens anyway) I would tell them to find and train for another related carreer, because they might face some employment hurdles in 10-30 years. 

Pay and benefits are a constant issue, as are hours-of-service regulations, but a person with a CDL and a good employment record will have no problem finding work for the forseeable future. 

But for the near term, (1 to 10 years or so) there are no worries at all for employable drivers. 

My commments about the other duties that drivers have, was designed to help the readers understand that commercial drivers dont just hold the steering wheel....they have other work activities that are involved. Those other activities have to done by someone. 

Think about this: Even those fancy new self-driving Teslas, Google self-driving cars, Rivians and Chevy Bolts have to have someone to plug them in to a charger, they cant even do that without a human to operate the charging cord. 

Tire replacements, yard duties, vehicle inspections, brake servicing, hooking and unhooking trailers, loading and unloading, will all need to be done by someone. Diesel truck mechanics may eventually become less employable, but many of them will also transition to other related jobs in the transportation sector.

And the 'first and last mile' will be done by commercial drivers for a long time to come. Those pallets and boxes and packages dont just 'jump' off the delivery truck onto your porch or the EV manufacturer's dock, or into the back door of the taco stand or mom-and-pop hardware store. 

Line-haul, dedicated, and regular-route truckload sectors COULD be electrified and automated IF our infrastructure was redesigned and upgraded to accomodate it. But P&D activities and irregular route trucking will still require a driver in that seat for a long time to come. In fact, as some freight tonnage is shifted to controlled EV lanes and routes, the opportunities for irregular route and wildcat independent drivers hauling 'ASAP' (hot loads) and just-in-time freight may even expand, all the while burning petroleum fuels and grinding gears.

But, I'm retired from that line of work, so either way, it wont affect my financial situation at all.

 

[GotOldEarly]

Well written, and respect is due. But you missed (or avoided) some of my points concerning the near-term shake-up of the logistics and transportation industry.

My head is not in the sand, it's facing the impossibility of a complete conversion in the near term. 

As I said, there will be experiments, trials, media one-offs, maybe even some regional and local traffic lanes and delivery routes (where the truck returns to a domicile or 'home point' every day) that will be practical in some cases for electric and/or autonomous trucks, but my expectation is that eventually technology wont replace truck drivers, but that it will likely shift some of them to other duties. The OP posted that truck drivers are 'worried'...I can assure you both, most of them are not. 


If a young person of say 20 years old said they wanted to be a carreer truck driver (which never happens anyway) I would tell them to find and train for another related carreer, because they might face some employment hurdles in 10-30 years. 

Pay and benefits are a constant issue, as are hours-of-service regulations, but a person with a CDL and a good employment record will have no problem finding work for the forseeable future. 

But for the near term, (1 to 10 years or so) there are no worries at all for employable drivers. 

My commments about the other duties that drivers have, was designed to help the readers understand that commercial drivers dont just hold the steering wheel....they have other work activities that are involved. Those other activities have to done by someone. 

Think about this: Even those fancy new self-driving Teslas, Google self-driving cars, Rivians and Chevy Bolts have to have someone to plug them in to a charger, they cant even do that without a human to operate the charging cord. 

Tire replacements, yard duties, vehicle inspections, brake servicing, hooking and unhooking trailers, loading and unloading, will all need to be done by someone. Diesel truck mechanics may eventually become less employable, but many of them will also transition to other related jobs in the transportation sector.

And the 'first and last mile' will be done by commercial drivers for a long time to come. Those pallets and boxes and packages dont just 'jump' off the delivery truck onto your porch or the EV manufacturer's dock, or into the back door of the taco stand or mom-and-pop hardware store. 

Line-haul, dedicated, and regular-route truckload sectors COULD be electrified and automated IF our infrastructure was redesigned and upgraded to accomodate it. But P&D activities and irregular route trucking will still require a driver in that seat for a long time to come. In fact, as some freight tonnage is shifted to controlled EV lanes and routes, the opportunities for irregular route and wildcat independent drivers hauling 'ASAP' (hot loads) and just-in-time freight may even expand, all the while burning petroleum fuels and grinding gears.

But, I'm retired from that line of work, so either way, it wont affect my financial situation at all.

I'm surprised that no has mentioned or considered the political restraints that may prohibit or at least cause this change over to be very gradual and likely never total.  I mean, we have politicians running our country that don't always vote or support what is right or best for the people.  Many think they know best (surely we are not capable of fully understanding what it best for us (in their minds)).  They are motivated by money.  Big Oil is BIG MONEY.  Their pockets are very well lined by the petroleum industry and they will not allow change(s) that jeopardise(s) that income or threatens that power.  

It will likely happen but the transition will be intentionally drug out for a very long time.  If someone discovers another cleaner use for all of the crude oil (that hopefully results in a greater demand that will raise its cost and generate even more revenue) that does not involve the motor vehicle industry then yes, we will see this transition implemented with lightning speed.

Greed is King.  To many leaders are motivated by greed.  Many of us common folk understand that greed is the root of all things evil.  Unfortunately, we are the captains of our own ship and have very limited influence on the worldwide navigational infrastructure.

 -- All the best,  Lee --

 

[Dingfelder]

I don't think this will be workable enough to be widely adopted until we develop the proper road-rage AI to scream at other drivers and get our anxieties out by proxy while we nap.

 

[IGBT]

If the timeline you posted actually comes to pass, we might be able to boondock on the moon or Mars in 20 years or so.

Every vehicle on the road autonomous and electric in 10 years?

You have been watching too much of the Jetsons.

 

[Sepudo]

I find it all very exciting.

on a discussion on national public radio they compared self driving cars to elevators. A few generations ago elevators had to be operated by a ''professional" and when elevators became automatic it took about 50 years for people to accept them as the norm.

Same thing will happen with auto cars. Can't stop the future.

https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-driverless-elevators-drew-skepticism

 

[Bathyio]

Well, I am not that worried bout losing drivers a job and all (IMO, not to be selfish), but what my concern is having the more chances of street cases. Even human has our own errors, what more with computers.

 

[K9EZ]

I'm more worried about the dissapearance of the autonomous person; than I am the appearance of the autonomous vehicle.

 

[johnny b]

Uber autonomous car WITH human back-up.
Still killed a woman.