Self-driving truck completes FIRST EVER cross-country trip from California to Pennsylvania driving 2,800 miles 'primarily' in autonomous mode

UK Daily Mail ^ | December 10, 2019 | Stacy Liberatore

[C19fan]

A self-driving truck has completed the first cross-country commercial freight run.

Plus.ai, announced its truck traveled 2,800 miles autonomously from California to Pennsylvania hauling a fully-loaded refrigerated trailer of perishable cargo.

The vehicle is fitted with advanced autonomous driving system that utilizes multimodal sensor fusion, deep learning visual algorithms and simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) technologies.

The truck drove in autonomous mode across interstate 17 and interstate 70, while traveling through different terrains and weather conditions.

Although a safety driver and engineer were on-board, this journey, according to Plus.ai, validates ‘the system’s ability to safely handle a wide range of weather and road conditions.’

[Openurmind]

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with alternative propulsion systems as an “option”. Problem is they always start optional and then become mandatory. Mandatory electric is bad, if the grid goes down it will be an exercise in mass depopulation. My main no no is autonomous vehicles. This should never happen for many obvious reasons starting with practical reliability as I stated. What good would it be if it is in the repair shop 90% the time for thousands of different “safety issues” concerning an unnecessary autonomous system? It is just extremely illogical and impractical in reality. there is also cause and effect, if the vehicle drives for us, we will forget how to drive ourselves. This has already proven it’s self over and over to be a very real inevitable cause and effect result of technology. :)