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

santacruzsentinel.com

71–80 of 180 posts

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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a trucker? Once upon a time, horse drawn carriages transported people and there were stables and groomsmen and carriage drivers and those who provided food and board for the horses. That entire industry and those jobs disappeared when the motor cars came along. They found other jobs. We moved on.

Yeah, and once dinosaurs roamed the earth. It’s easy to make generalizations about the merits of moving on when you aren’t being left behind.

Yes. This is true..what you say. But the world keeps turning. C’est la vie etc.

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

#72
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

it's worse than that, of course. You'll find, like a certain Greek philosopher fond of asking annoying questions, that the first 90% of the last 10% will be OK, and that last 10% will be the other 90% of the ... etc. etc. etc.

In 1995 having a domestic phone call, placed on a wired line, drop due to line issues was effectively inconceivable -- it simply would never happen. In 2015 we were in a time when it happened all the time, people simply accepted that voip was often unreliable.

In 2019 the idea of a vehicle around you simply stopping because its driver doesn't know how to handle a situation is extremely rare.

I suspect that by 2039 it will be far more commonplace, shrugged off as just a fact of life that electronic drivers fail on a regular basis and need to pull over and wait either for intervention or conditions to change.

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

#74
post #42

Interesting thing is that their Silicon Valley office is next to a strip mall and is more of an office space than an industrial one. I live near there and so far haven't seen any of their branded trucks or anything of their brand really relative to other self driving startups like Apple roaming around with their mattress-like hardware system. So I'm guessing most development work is happening in China, just like seve…

It is interesting...

Makes you wonder if the things they are claiming to have working, and the accomplishments, are actually true, or just smoke as they hope for a high flying payday by a cash flush competitor hoping to buy advancements.

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

#75
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take a 90% efficiency gain any day. If they can drive I-70 from SF to NYC with no human, or the 10 from Florida to California, that seems like a win, even if the person has to drive in the city. Warehousing will just get shifted around to work with where the trucks can safely drive.

That would be quite the feat given that I70 goes to neither of those states. I80 goes SF to NJ, but no single interstate will take you from SF to NYC proper.

I'm pretty sure the control city on 80 east is NYC and not Newark.

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take a 90% efficiency gain any day. If they can drive I-70 from SF to NYC with no human, or the 10 from Florida to California, that seems like a win, even if the person has to drive in the city. Warehousing will just get shifted around to work with where the trucks can safely drive.

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.

No.

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

#77
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's one safety driver monitoring 4 vehicles it's still a win.

Only if your win is continuing devolution of the middle class.

If having less work that needs to be done is a negative then there's a problem with our system of economics, not with having less work that needs to be done.

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

#78
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's one safety driver monitoring 4 vehicles it's still a win.

Only if your win is continuing devolution of the middle class.

Truck driving is not and has never been a middle-class occupation.

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

#79

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.

Yang is acceleration.

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

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the truck still requires a human for some tasks (intra-city, fuelling, etc.) but can be rated to legally drive itself for most of the trip, then the human could sleep / eat / etc. during those times they're not required. This would presumably let them avoid minimum stationary rest times etc. since they could get a full rest of sleep while the truck drives itself (on sufficiently long journeys). For owner-operators…

Well, if you had trucks that were safe enough to sleep in while they auto-drove, the companies would certainly want to go one better and have them drive empty. They could create dedicated fueling and loading areas if need-be.

But the trucks being that safe is the big question. The article describes a single trip without disengagement. Much more that is clearly needed.

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