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Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

santacruzsentinel.com

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Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#131

Post by jillesvangurp »

CraneWorm wrote: post #94
louis_pasteur wrote: post #73

Sooner or later, drones will start plying across aerial routes too for transportation of goods. That will be perhaps both cheaper for ebay/amazon and also leave the roads free for people to walk. What do you think?

Isn't flying stuff more expensive than driving it around?

Depends. Uf you have solar panels, the electricity is more or less free after you buy and deploy them. So if you have some drone fleet and solar panels + batteries, the only real cost you have is basically maintenance. The way many businesses work, variable cost is what matters. So you'd lease the drones, the solar panels & batteries (or just get a cheap energy supplier) and focus on handling and transporting packages. Drones are interesting for that because you can save time by flying point to point, and cost by not having to employ drivers/pilots.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#133

Post by jillesvangurp »

sys_64738 wrote: post #47

How does a self-driving truck refill its gas tank without human intervention?

By not having one and being an electric truck instead. That will help with heavy loads as well because they have awesome torque. Just a matter of time before battery production volume enables mass retirement of Diesel fleets. Short term, there simply aren't enough batteries and plenty more lucrative things that also require batteries (like luxury tank like trucks for people who need to compensate for something). Once that market saturates, trucks are obviously going electric at a massive scale.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#134

Post by gambiting »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #130
scurvy wrote: post #81

Out of curiosity, how do they handle the transmissions in self-driving trucks? My guess was automatics, but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this. DSG? Fully "automatic" clutch-based manuals? These things have to be pretty expensive.

When trucks go electric, they'll be a lot easier to control. Current trucks are optimized for truck drivers. They become a lot simpler if you no longer need to worry about transporting humans. IMHO autonomous ICE vehicles on the road will probably not happen because they are getting replaced with cheaper EVs in roughly the same time frame that autonomous driving is happening and not having to worry about complex engi…

>>When trucks go electric, they'll be a lot easier to control

The big elephant in the room is of course the fact that no one can actually explain how you'd make trucks electric. Cabs aren't fitted with dual 300 litre diesel tanks for show - moving 40+ tonnes takes a lot of energy and a battery that would provide a similar range to what we have now would be gigantic, meaning both very heavy and very expensive.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#135

Post by mr_toad »

sys_64738 wrote: post #47

How does a self-driving truck refill its gas tank without human intervention?

> How does a self-driving truck refill its gas tank without human intervention?

I know it’s facetious, but I couldn’t help but think of the human batteries in The Matrix when I read that question.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#136

Post by SigmundA »

scurvy wrote: post #81

Out of curiosity, how do they handle the transmissions in self-driving trucks? My guess was automatics, but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this. DSG? Fully "automatic" clutch-based manuals? These things have to be pretty expensive.

>but torque converter automatics aren't strong enough for use in a big-rig like this.

Not true Allison makes pretty standard 6 speed automatics with torque converters that can handle class 8 trucks, look at the 4500 series.

They aren't the most efficient for long haul steady state highway though, Allison introduced a sort of hybrid 10 speed with torque converter back in 2012 for highway use called the TC10.

Other makers of automatics are Detroit, Eaton and Volvo I believe they are all dry clutch designs.

The automatics can have better efficiency do to fast optimized shifting and are of course easier to train. I believe that majority of newer trucks (2015+) are built with automatics now.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#137

Post by SigmundA »

melling wrote: post #19

“the truck drove mostly autonomously.” That last 10% is going to be a lot of work. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

This would still be a big win for long haul trucking, most of time is spent staying in lane on the interstate. The drivers are required to take breaks to stay alert which adds time to the delivery unless alternating drivers.

IMO this is where self driving should focus, not city driving. Truck drivers or anyone gets the vehicle on the interstate and you can sleep or whatever to the next exit for fuel or your destination then take over again.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#138

Post by robomartin »

Sorry to pour cold butter on this...

This is not at all what we want. We need to build an automated electric high speed cargo rail system connecting the coasts and major ports. The system has to have the ability for individual container units to be routed independently.

Nothing would compare to moving cargo at 300 mph or more on an efficient rail system.

We need trucking to be local or short range and eliminate individual trucks for long range delivery.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#139

Post by tonyedgecombe »

orbifold wrote: post #121
k_bx wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that it seems that there's already a shortage of truck drivers out there, so it's not only displacement, but also filling of jobs which don't have enough people willing to take https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/u-s-truck...

Shortage of a certain type of labor is just an indicator that it doesn’t pay enough. I’ve also got a shortage of Tesla in my garage.

It's also an indication that people think it's a shitty job and they would prefer something else.

Re: Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

#140

Post by Shivetya »

orbifold wrote: post #121
k_bx wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that it seems that there's already a shortage of truck drivers out there, so it's not only displacement, but also filling of jobs which don't have enough people willing to take https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-24/u-s-truck...

Shortage of a certain type of labor is just an indicator that it doesn’t pay enough. I’ve also got a shortage of Tesla in my garage.

it is also an indication of a highly regulated industry which disqualifies a lot of would be workers for better or worse. There are many issues which prevent hiring, ranging from certain felonies on your record, if there are outstanding warrants, and that a CDL comes with drug and alcohol testing. This is on top of the obvious issues with your driving history.

While there is this big push to legalize drugs like marijuana it does not negate federal and state rules against its use legal or not and certain occupations.

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