Self-driving truck delivers butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 6:53 AM UTC

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.

European heavy trucks are automatic. It's a robot pulling the gearstick and pushing the clutch under the hood.

I guess some US brands offer it too? Even though I know manual is popular in the US. It's kinda funny how the automatic is so popular for cars in the US but not for trucks while in Europe it is the opposite and trucks are automatic and uptil recently cars were manual mostly.

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

#92

Post by loeg » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 6:54 AM UTC

aggie wrote: post #64

catalogia wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that doesn't make much sense to me. Local brands of butter made with local dairy are popular in Pennsylvania. It's alarming to think how environmentally inefficient shipping butter two thousand miles must be.

It's a good argument for a carbon tax.

And a damage-proportionate road tax.

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

#93

Post by duelingjello » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 6:57 AM UTC

Tempest1981 wrote: post #59

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 an option to teach and mentor people the fundamentals of running a successful small business (expanding SBA/SCORE)

- give people a chance to showcase, see and try out different industries

- setup a factory incubator to allow bootstrapping and designing efficient, streamlined operations for quality products made in the US at globally-competitive prices.

Investing in people and infrastructure brings lots of indirect returns. Do everything possible to help people to succeed and have a future.

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

#94

Post by CraneWorm » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:09 AM UTC

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?

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

#95

Post by djrobstep » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:13 AM UTC

acollins1331 wrote: post #49

nwallin wrote: 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.

More automation is a win for the middle class and every other class. If a society chooses to violently deprive the middle class of economic resources, that's the fault of the police, not the automated economy.

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

#96

Post by freddie_mercury » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:14 AM UTC

duelingjello wrote: post #89

Sure, it proved it can do an autonomous truck Cannonball run, but why not produce and use locally? Not as some hippy-dippy thing, but it seems like a waste of petroleum to truck products clear across the entire country when there's enough land and resources to make the same or similar products nearer to the points of consumption. Common. sense.

It isn't like we never tried your idea. That's exactly how it worked for decades & centuries and then the world discovered shipping stuff from far away works better.

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

#97

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:17 AM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#98

Post by 8bitsrule » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:20 AM UTC

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

I want to hear more about how it will work when guys who are braking-bad can drive up alongside the truck and determine that there's no human driver. One car in front, one car on the side ...

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

#99

Post by jotm » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:24 AM UTC

AlexCoventry wrote: post #50

joe_the_user wrote: post #36

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.

I'm sure someone's working on telepresence which kicks in when the AI's getting confused.

Earn credits for Stadia - solve these realtime truck simulator captcha!

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

#100

Post by joshuahaglund » Thu, Dec 12, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

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.

They've got electronically controlled clutches, no torque converter.

Yeah, probably more expensive than a manual but they save gas which will cost much more long term.

https://www.ttnews.com/articles/manual-transmissions-rapidly...