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Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

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Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#51

Post by froindt »

hapless wrote: post #9
mav3r1ck wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right it’s not that novel. Volvo has self-driving* truck convoys going back to the 90s I think. I think for long-haul trucking it’s certainly pretty hard to stay fully tuned while driving for such long times. And for truck companies, they can save tons of money on labor when they don’t have to pay the driver for the hours on the road and just for the manual disconnect/connect docking. Maybe they can make it fu…

Truck companies avoid this kind of thing because it's expensive to maintain pools of short-haul drivers at either end of the transport link. If you are willing to assume those costs/risks, you can already send freight by rail, which is an order of magnitude more efficient on fuel, and sometimes even a little faster. The reason you pay for long-haul trucking is that you want to have the driver _already on hand_ for th…

> Truck companies avoid this kind of thing because it's expensive to maintain pools of short-haul drivers at either end of the transport link. If you are willing to assume those costs/risks, you can already send freight by rail, which is an order of magnitude more efficient on fuel, and sometimes even a little faster.

Speaking only from the US perspective, I agree with most of this. But there are a couple things you're not taking into account:

1) Delivery variability for rail. While rail is much cheaper in terms of cost per ton mile, good luck getting an accurate estimate of when it will be delivered. Midwest to Pacific Northwest I've seen variability of a week or two for going halfway across the country. If they're delivering to you and are multiple days late, they still expect you to drop whatever else you had planned and get their rail car unloaded on a relatively short turnaround or they start charging fees.

2) Rail requires quite a large scale. Many factories aren't shipping out more than a few semis per day. Getting to enough to fill a couple rail cars would significantly increase the inventory levels.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#52

Post by panopticon »

lambda_lover wrote: post #43
mtgx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will Uber pay a bigger portion of the road repair taxes? Especially considering truckers already pay a disproportionately lower tax compared to the impact they have on the roads.

Do they? I mean, trucks are hardly gas efficient, and aren't most roads maintained (supposedly) via gas taxes? The question, I suppose, is how much harder they are on the roads relative to their fuel efficiency.

> I mean, trucks are hardly gas efficient, and aren't most roads maintained (supposedly) via gas taxes?

The gas tax hasn't been increased since 1993 and accounts for less than half of road funding.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#53

Post by andechs »

lsy wrote: post #46
lambda_lover wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? I mean, trucks are hardly gas efficient, and aren't most roads maintained (supposedly) via gas taxes? The question, I suppose, is how much harder they are on the roads relative to their fuel efficiency.

Fuel efficiency decreases generally relative to the surface area of the front of the vehicle, where road damage increases with the mass of the vehicle. So a long, heavy vehicle like a truck is indeed harder on the road relative to their fuel efficiency.

  > road damage increases with the mass
Road damage actually increases proportional to mass^4 - trucks cause exponentially more damage than cars.

https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#54

Post by kerryfalk »

lonelyw0lf wrote: post #42

The video ad is so crazy -- we still need a human to lock/unlock the cargo?? and its good for the truckers because they can go home early to their family?? The first part can be trivially automated and the second is just stupid. Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money. AI-self-driving has arrived but to make the transition look "humane" as in the AD is crazy. Almost insults the intelligence of the…

I think you've missed this one - the typical long-haul truck driver drives somewhere far enough away that they can't return home and must stay overnight (sometimes sleeping in their trucks) before they can drive again.

This system seems to indicate that the automated trucks do the long hauls between cities and the human drivers do the shorter hauls within/around cities.

If that's the case, this is a good thing.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#57

Post by emodendroket »

nopinsight wrote: post #8

For those concerned with jobs to be eliminated, it might not be as big a problem as we think for the trucking industry. "Over the next 10 years, he said, we need to attract almost 900,000 new people to the industry. Demographics is a big part of the problem. ATA’s research arm, the American Transportation Research Institute, recently updated its demographic data on drivers and found some 57% of drivers are 45 or olde…

I rarely see justification for the idea that lump of labor is actually fallacious. Historically big die-offs have led to higher wages for survivors.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#58

Post by neolefty »

snaveed wrote: post #47
mtgx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will Uber pay a bigger portion of the road repair taxes? Especially considering truckers already pay a disproportionately lower tax compared to the impact they have on the roads.

This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the rationale for taxation. There is a societal benefit to efficient means of transportation. You, along with most other people, are reaping the benefits of truckers using roads to deliver cargo.

Not including externalities--such as road maintenance--distorts the market. Better to capture them all so that different forms of transportation can compete "fairly". That is, without hidden subsidies.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#59

Post by knieveltech »

sol_remmy wrote: post #36
LethargicStud wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot. It is unreasonable to hold the entire population back to continue employing those in a specific field. If we consistently did that, we'd be in the stone age and our…

Absolutely. Automated trucks will allow shipping costs to be much cheaper which will stimulate the economy in 1000 different ways

"Stimulate the economy" and "provide prosperity" correlate only very weakly, if at all.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#60

Post by emodendroket »

panopticon wrote: post #52
lambda_lover wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? I mean, trucks are hardly gas efficient, and aren't most roads maintained (supposedly) via gas taxes? The question, I suppose, is how much harder they are on the roads relative to their fuel efficiency.

> I mean, trucks are hardly gas efficient, and aren't most roads maintained (supposedly) via gas taxes? The gas tax hasn't been increased since 1993 and accounts for less than half of road funding.

Perhaps on a related note, our roads are in embarrassing condition.
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