151–160 of 180 posts
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I'll take a 90% efficiency gain any day. If you need a safety driver 100% of the time, the net gain in efficiency is 0%. Edit: There's no comment in the article about there being period with no safety driver.
If it's one safety driver monitoring 4 vehicles it's still a win.
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?
I don't think the kind of truck they're aiming to automatise ever enter cities.
What kind of drones and what kind of goods are you talking about ? Let's say you want to transport 40T of potatoes over 2k miles, how would that work ?
Drones are good for the last few miles of the delivery (for small consumer goods), and even then there are tons of issues to fix before they'll be viable.
https://www.trucking.org/News_and_Information_Reports_Indust...
> 11.49 billion tons of freight (primary shipments only) transported by trucks in 2018, representing 71.4% of total domestic tonnage shipped.
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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.
Batteries are not cheap of course. But then the life time consumption of diesel for a Truck is not exactly cheap either and probably buys you a lot of battery and power to charge them. Assuming a million miles (which is what Tesla is shooting for with their drive trains) and a generous 6 miles to the gallon, we're talking about 0.5M fuel cost at 3$/gallon. Your mileage may vary a little of course but it's a nice round number. If you'd buy Tesla 3's at 50K each and stripped their batteries you'd end up with with 10 x 75kwh = 750kwh (and a lot of premium cars). So, lets just say that amount of money easily gets you into mwh territory which fully explains why Tesla can advertise a 500 mile range, which in a truck doing 50m/h is about ten hours of driving, which I'm sure legally requires taking some breaks in the US as well (i.e, plenty of opportunity for charging, just in case you'd bring up range anxiety as a thing).
As the whole point of a truck is to move heavy loads, adding a few tonnes of battery that you would need for this should not be a problem. Torque is superior with electric. I doubt moving 40+ tonnes is going to be much of a problem given that they routinely demonstrate the torque of EVs by having them pull e.g. freight trains, large jets, or whatever. Also, EVs can do regeneration downhill or when braking and they barely use any power when idling (unlike Diesel engines).
For better or worse, millions of truck drivers are going to be displaced. Just like the way robots replaced manufacturing jobs. The best plan is to prepare, like Yang and others are saying: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/trucking-czar/ So we can soften the blow.
Everyone is crying doom and gloom but I see a mostly seamless transition. The more cargo management responsibilities a driver has the later they will get automated. These are also the most senior and well paid drivers. Truck drivers who will be replaced first are going to be the steering wheel holders that drag a dry van from loading dock to loading dock. These are also the most junior and poorly paid drivers. As aut…
These junior and poorly paid drivers are humans who need to eat first of all. If we automate their jobs away we need to come up with a way where that doesn't result in undue hardship.
That said I think you're underestimating how many poorly paid junior truck drivers there are. I don't think there'll be enough cargo management jobs to catch all truck drivers, not by a wide margin. Don't forget that currently the cargo management jobs are already being done by people. It's not like it's a new category of work that didn't exist before.
The amount of job available is going to shrink significantly if trucks get automated. No matter from which angle you look at it that means people are going to need to work less. Which in practice means that people are going to earn less. We need to figure out how to deal with that before it happens. Maybe it resolves itself and that's fine, but assuming it will is playing dangerous games with the food source of people you don't know.
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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 marij…
No. I was a truck driver for almost a year. The job pays like shit. You have to pay $2-5k for classes to get a CDL or get locked in with a company that trains you and you pay back at their variable rates of interest... oh and they "lose payments" often along with charging you high late fees. They take anyone with a heartbeat. It's the ultimate form of equality. If you're dumb enough or desperate enough, they'll take…
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No. I was a truck driver for almost a year. The job pays like shit. You have to pay $2-5k for classes to get a CDL or get locked in with a company that trains you and you pay back at their variable rates of interest... oh and they "lose payments" often along with charging you high late fees. They take anyone with a heartbeat. It's the ultimate form of equality. If you're dumb enough or desperate enough, they'll take…
Wow. I had no idea it was this bad. And you didn’t even touch the hazards of actual driving for 8 hrs a day, often on tricky mountain passes, with heavy snow
Quick look, they did change the rules since I quit in 2012. Looks like a 60/70 hour limit in a 7/8 day span.
Though, you're restart is a wonderful 34 hours time-off in... a loud truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Always.
Oh, but you are protected (and I believe the insurance companies help with this too) that if a driver says road conditions are too dangerous, the company can't force them to drive anymore. Doesn't stop them from punishing you afterwards with too little loads.
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That’s the reality of modern agriculture. All of this innovation and advanced tech just squeezing a few pennies out of butter. Check out this gentleman, a 4th generation onion farmer in upstate NY who cannot sell his onions at any price. Like many farmers in the northeast, he’ll be bankrupt in a few months. https://twitter.com/ChrisPawelski/status/1173339453332643840... Produce buyers use cartel tactics to suppress p…
Reading his posts it sounds like what he needs are futures contracts. He is complaining of the price dropping once harvest season hits. He is claiming there is a conspiracy that once supply enter the market prices drop. Sadly due to historic reasons futures markets for onions are illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act His plight speaks to why futures markets are important. His costs and production p…
There are definitely big changes in how produce is being purchased now, with closed-market strategic sourcing replacing older markets that were more transparent. Producers are paying for increasing consumer competition in grocery.
For better or worse, millions of truck drivers are going to be displaced. Just like the way robots replaced manufacturing jobs. The best plan is to prepare, like Yang and others are saying: https://www.yang2020.com/policies/trucking-czar/ So we can soften the blow.
We need to create lots of jobs in other industries that allow living wages without a college degree. The government should massively incentivize: - solar farms - wind turbines - battery storage deployments - residential solar w/ batteries and grid-down operation (most grid-tied virtual battery solar stops working completely in a power outage) - achieve fusion power net output - elderly and disabled caregivers - offer…
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 indiv…
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> Judging by how frequently I occasionally lose internet connection for a mile or two in my major metro area for even basic tasks, like Siri dictation or streaming audio, I can't imagine how remote takeover could possibly be the answer to the "10%" situation I mean, it's possible that demand for self-driving trucks means reliable wireless connections get implemented everywhere they can drive.
There is already fantastic LTE along all the long-haul truck routes, because human truck drivers like to be connected to the rest of society while they are alone on the road for dozens of hours. Also, Starlink is coming.