Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes • Hacker News Board

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#321

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Sat, May 03, 2025, 12:37 PM UTC

jen729w wrote: post #122

floxy wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why aren't trains automated yet? I mean, beside the inter-airport shuttles. Seems like a much more constrained set of parameters to deal with. I'd think this would be a good "first" project to tackle for an AV company, even if the economics of replacing locomotive drivers/engineers weren't super compelling. Is it an insurance thing? Because a train wreck could be much more disastrous and costly? Or is it a union t…

> beside the inter-airport shuttles Singapore and Sydney would like a word.

Nuremberg(partially), Hamburg(partially, soon), too.

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#322

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Sat, May 03, 2025, 12:40 PM UTC

voidspark wrote: post #265

hermitShell wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be great to enable electric cars to go long distances with platoons? Like a bus system for electric cars to go between cities and charge while you drive. The ‘bus’ is basically a big efficient generator that can charge up the cars behind it. A lot like mid flight refueling for fighter jets.

Generator powered by what? If its a diesel powered generator, that's even less efficient and more polluting than just using diesel trucks in the first place.

Hydrogen

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#323

Post by Fruitmaniac » Sat, May 03, 2025, 12:45 PM UTC

One company's name was conspicuously absent from the article. Does anyone believe Tesla is still a player in the autonomous driving game? They always seem to be playing catch-up.

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#324

Post by tim333 » Sat, May 03, 2025, 12:51 PM UTC

bgnn wrote: post #303

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not seeing much rail that is under utilized out here int he west, if anything it is over subscribed. The energy savings in having one or two diesel electrics pull a long chain of cars is substantial, I get the feeling that if you just put trucks on rails you’d lose a lot of that. You also need to be more conservative with elevation changes, right of ways, and turning radiuses, so lots of tunneling and viaducting…

most of Europe north of the alps is fairly flat in elevation. Railways are oversubscribed because they are not expanded enough, defunded if you like, to expand and fund the highway network. It is stupid to travel thousands of kilometers by trucks. It's inefficient, expensive and nit scalable. Currently we use mostly huge container ships and empty them with trucks, absolutely insane. There's quite a bit of river boat…

>the sorry state of the railways is just human-made and not dictated by economics

I'm not sure about the world in general but I've followed the HS2 line in the UK and the problems are pretty much economic. We have a couple of north south lines along the UK but they are basically at capacity so the idea was to build another and make it high speed but it's proved incredibly expensive, partly due to property ownership and housing along the line and partly due to environmental regulations leading to £100m shelters to avoid disturbing a few bats. (bat thing https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/25/environment-...)

Estimates for building it have gone from £38bn in 2011 to £136bn in 2023. They are still building some of it but brexit britain doesn't have that many spare £136bns lying around. https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/3088/economics/pros-and-c...

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#325

Post by tim333 » Sat, May 03, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #196

Is that what the public wants? I suspect that if the public was aware, the verdict would be clear.

In the recent HN on Waymo non drivers seem pretty happy with them being safer than human drivers. I imagine there could be similar benefits with autonomous trucks. Also in the UK they make the motorways very crowded. If some autonomous stuff could go overnight when the roads are empty that could help.

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#326

Post by tim333 » Sat, May 03, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

bgnn wrote: post #309

So now one can hack a truck and steal its cargo? Neat.

That kind of thing could happen before autonomy. Our factory had someone turn up and say I'm the driver to pick up the truck over there, get given keys and make off with a truck load of stock.

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#327

Post by tim333 » Sat, May 03, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #56

EvanAnderson wrote: post #32

There's also a trial of "platooning" of driverless trucks on I-70 in Ohio and Indiana: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbishop1/2025/04/24/ease-... A "drivered" lead truck is leading one or more driverless trucks in this case. I drive the stretch of highway these trucks are on fairly regularly. I don't know that I've seen a group of them yet but I'm keeping my eye out. I'm probably just showing my age, but I like…

next level would be to hook these "platoons" together physically and then centralize the propulsion in a super efficient package. And then we could move them off the highways and onto specialized "tracks" that guarantee they don't deviate from the planned routes. speculative, alien technology, admittedly, but some day our scientists will figure it out i bet!

Trains have been with us for over a century and aren't going to suddenly change on their own to solve all transport problems. Self driving tech may help make them work better by handling the station to end location bit cheaper or more efficiently than human workers.

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#328

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, May 03, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #305

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you just talking about the USA? I would bet that rail in Europe and Eastern Asia is also pretty subsidized, as much as or even more so than roads.

Rather the opposite in Europe, actually. The European rail network is strongly liberalized, starting with the First Railway Directive 91/440/EEC. The physical infrastructure now usually falls under a state-owned enterprise, which provides access to any company wanting to use it, at a fair and non-discriminatory pricing. In practice this means that the usage fees have to pay for all upkeep and maintenance, with occasi…

France has fairly high tolls on roads and Switzerland has that sticker you have to buy to use the expressways.

Japanese rail companies must get some sort of subsidy on tracks, the passenger rail system runs at a loss and only turns a profit on renting space in train stations. Roads are also heavily tolled (similar in China).

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#329

Post by EasyMark » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:12 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #188

o11c wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with railroad is exactly the other side of this: that you can't trivially and automatically detach a single car at any point. I know businesses that literally have an old railroad branch line right up to their door, but they can't actually order anything meaningful via rail. The existing rail system has at least the following constraints: * Uses steel-on-steel friction, rather than rubber-on-rock. Cars th…

The bigger issue is that roads are immensely subsidised compared to rail. Even on private roads that are completely covered by usage charges, trucks pay maybe a factor of 2-10 more than cars, however they cause about 40000 times more wear (let's even disregard how they also cause disproportionately more traffic...). Obviously this calculation becomes even worse if we consider that most roads are subsidised by all tax…

that 40000 figure is the product of one study. I have always been suspicious of it and wished people could cite more than one study written 40+ years ago

Re: Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

#330

Post by pokeymcsnatch » Sat, May 03, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

ortusdux wrote: post #198

Is anyone working on an electric truck system where the battery is on the trailer? Many businesses are constantly rotating the same dry van trailers between hubs. If you charged the trailers at the doc during loading/unloading, the rigs could run 24/7, only stopping to swap trailers.

Work/worked for a place that was doing this. There's a couple problems:

* More battery weight means less cargo weight

* Trailers are dumb; the standard hookup (in NA) is lights and air. I hear CAN is common in EU though.

* Trailers are cheap and almost disposable.

The trucking industry is very slow moving, and probably 20 years behind passenger cars. So changing any of this stuff, even though none of it sounds particularly major, is at least 15 years out to start. Then you're left with the hundreds of thousands of "legacy" trailers that need to be retired or retrofit. The tractor to trailer ratio out there is like 1:10.

One interesting use case for this though is refrigerated (refer) trailers. They're often diesel-electric so they can plug in to shore power. Add a battery to this and maybe you can dump the diesel motor. Again though, weight is an issue... diesel is an order of magnitude more energy dense than the best batteries we have.