Posted on 04/27/2016 12:26:09 PM PDT by JOAT
A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam. No technology will automate away more jobs — or drive more economic efficiency — than the driverless truck.
Shipping a full truckload from L.A. to New York costs around $4,500 today, with labor representing 75 percent of that cost. But those labor savings aren’t the only gains to be had from the adoption of driverless trucks.
Where drivers are restricted by law from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an 8-hour break, a driverless truck can drive nearly 24 hours per day. That means the technology would effectively double the output of the U.S. transportation network at 25 percent of the cost.
And the savings become even more significant when you account for fuel efficiency gains. The optimal cruising speed from a fuel efficiency standpoint is around 45 miles per hour, whereas truckers who are paid by the mile drive much faster. Further fuel efficiencies will be had as the self-driving fleets adopt platooning technologies, like those from Peloton Technology, allowing trucks to draft behind one another in highway trains.
Trucking represents a considerable portion of the cost of all the goods we buy, so consumers everywhere will experience this change as lower prices and higher standards of living.
While the efficiency gains are too real to pass up, the technology will have tremendous adverse effects as well.
In addition, once the technology is mature enough to be rolled out commercially, we will also enjoy considerable safety benefits. This year alone more people will be killed in traffic accidents involving trucks than in all domestic airline crashes in the last 45 years combined. At the same time, more truck drivers were killed on the job, 835, than workers in any other occupation in the U.S.
Even putting aside the direct safety risks, truck driving is a grueling job that young people don’t really want to do. The average age of a commercial driver is 55 (and rising every year), with projected driver shortages that will create yet more incentive to adopt driverless technology in the years to come.
While the efficiency gains are real — too real to pass up — the technology will have tremendous adverse effects as well. There are currently more than 1.6 million Americans working as truck drivers, making it the most common job in 29 states.
The loss of jobs representing 1 percent of the U.S. workforce will be a devastating blow to the economy. And the adverse consequences won’t end there. Gas stations, highway diners, rest stops, motels and other businesses catering to drivers will struggle to survive without them.
The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over. We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers. These are big projects that can only be done with the active support of government. However, regulators will be understandably reluctant to allow technology with the potential to eliminate so many jobs.
Yet the benefits from adopting it will be so huge that we can’t simply outlaw it. A 400 percent price-performance improvement in ground transportation networks will represent an incredible boost to human well-being. Where would we be if we had banned mechanized agriculture on the grounds that most Americans worked in farming when tractors and harvesters were introduced in the early 20th century?
We often discuss the displacement of jobs by artificial intelligence and robots in the abstract, as something that we’ll have to eventually tackle in the far distant future. But the recent successful demonstration of the self-driving truck shows that we can’t afford to put off the conversation on how we’re going to adapt to this new reality.
“There are currently more than 1.6 million Americans working as truck drivers, making it the most common job in 29 states. The loss of jobs representing 1 percent of the U.S. workforce will be a devastating blow to the economy. And the adverse consequences won’t end there. Gas stations, highway diners, rest stops, motels and other businesses catering to drivers will struggle to survive without them.”
And these unemployed people will not be able to buy the products the trucks are carrying. And so, what will the trucks even carry?
Remote, front mounted cattle prod.... oh, and a co2 detector...
“It is available in consumer vehicles (Tesla).”
Funny, I missed that press release. I’m willing to stand corrected, but I do not believe that Tesla has a consumer driverless car on the market. Rather, it has a car with some self driving features.
“Self driving truck can go door to door, thus beating the train.”
Just want to point out that even the article in the OP envisions special entry ramps to the freeway - and does not anticipate ‘door to door’ driverless trucks. I highly encourage you to visit one of these ‘doors’...ie delivery point at a factory. There’s a lot of human interaction - where to wait, which scale to weigh at, where to get product probed, untarping, opening doors, etc. I suspect that is why even the author knows door to door won’t happen.
“They aren’t necessarily using LIDAR, or cellular networks”
Can we agree that however they skin this cat, the system will involve precision instrumentation that costs some amount of money...and must be considered in the equation of whether or not to do away with the driver.
“Actually it IS being extensively used in mining and farming”
It is being used...albeit not extensively (especially not in farming if we are talking completely driverless). One of the reasons this is that fixed points can be set up for what is called ‘control’. Two control points could handle an entire quarry. Is it reasonable to set up control along our entire highway network? Well it hasn’t happened yet (btw the RRs have a network of line of sight radio towers that make this imminently possible, and being developed to meet government mandates for positive train control). And absent static control, networks are needed...anyway, this is why quarries and farms are good candidates for driverless vehicles.
“Automated vehicles are not just the future. They are the present.”
I will make a statement here: Driverless cars will not be in widespread consumer use for the next 100 years. There really is no compelling consumer demand, or business need for them.
Well, they have been toying with the idea that everyone just 'receives a paycheck' from Uncle Sugar.
Perhaps that is how we can 'buy' the stuff.
It was too close and too sudden. The truck should have slowed from further back and it should not have been so close.
I was in the digital map technology business for car navigation systems back in the 90s. There were working nav systems then, but nobody every heard of them. It took years just to get that working well enough that they are all over the place now. Safe self driving vehicles is way harder. Today's truckers are safe from being replaced by this tech I think, but maybe in 20 or 50 years it will be different.
Yes, I very much know how LIDAR works. I also know about all the other sensors involved as LIDAR is only one of them. The sensor fusion process doesn’t require perfect data from all sensors all the time. The vehicle will also notify the user if they need to take over if the vehicle can’t handle the environment but it won’t leave them stranded.
I don’t want the car to always drive me around, I want to be able to drive still. That said, I would buy one in an instant. All the car OEM’s aren’t spending all this money because there’s zero consumer demand.
I am involved in these projects. They are coming. The bigger challenges are not snow/rain fall.
One factor we have all forgotten to take into account....our burgeoning class of parasitic slip-and-fall lawyers.
It probably would not take more than a few accidents before liability issues drove the makers of these vehicles out of the market.
Amen. A human driver would have perceived the slow vehicle and taken corrective action much sooner.
“:^)
Google has been gathering insane amounts of GPS road data. They can probably run cars purely off that data alone, save for obstacle detection. They don’t need lines on the roads, they already know exactly where it is.
Government will tax away the savings, skim off some, and pay the remainder to the unemployed truckers who will have less but will be grateful to the government for paying them something.
The establishment thinks the truckers can be retrained as physicians or some other more rewarding job. In actuality, it will lead to more social decay but what the heck, the truckers are now captive voters for more government.
http://www.wired.com/2015/10/tesla-self-driving-over-air-update-live/
The tech still needs work. But there is now a self driving option in the consumer market.
Part of your problem now is you’re looking at the first stages of technology and thinking it won’t progress. You’re looking at Apple Newtons and saying iPads can’t happen. I’m pointing out they’re GOING to happen. The tech isn’t there yet, but it’s not many leaps away. Right now the primary problems are getting the right data in and processing correctly. The raw computing power is there, we just need to use it.
Precision instrumentation doesn’t have to be expensive. And of course as it gets used more, manufactured more, it gets cheaper. Look at the evolution of the cellphone market from ridiculously expensive bricks to cheap supercomputers in your pocket.
Automated mining and farming uses a different organizing concept. Centralized control of production vehicles on the public roads is a non-starter. But that just shows why it went there first, where, as you pointed out, it’s easiest. But again, the power to do these things is in everybody’s pocket, it’s just a matter of using it. Networks aren’t needed though. The closest thing they need to a network is GPS navigation, everything else can be handled through onsite data collection and processing. Parking assist, active collision avoidance, these are a lot of the building blocks and are already in mass produced cars.
It’s a fine statement. It’s also 100% wrong. I’m make a statement, and this one will come true: there will be a mass produced luxury driverless vehicle on the market within 5 years, and then it will follow the same path other car features have taken to trickle down to the low end market over the next 10 to 20 years. It’ll be like cruise control, power windows, AC and GPS, you’ll actually have to go out of your way to find a new vehicle lacking it. There is VERY MUCH a consumer demand for it, as the daily commute gets longer and gridlock makes it less interesting a growing percentage of people want to not drive. And as for business need just look at what happens to any company’s insurance rates when their corporate vehicle gets in an accident that was determined to be the fault of their employee.
You are talking about autonomous features...but a truly self driving car, defined as:
“The vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire trip, with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. As this vehicle would control all functions from start to stop, including all parking functions, it could include unoccupied cars.”
Absolutely will not happen in the next 5 years - or the next 100, quite frankly.
“there will be a mass produced luxury driverless vehicle on the market within 5 years”
April 27, 2021.
I’ll start my countdown clock, modeled after Rush’s Algore doomsday clock.
I GUARANTEE that will not happen - if for no other reason, regulatory hurdles in each state will take longer than that to overcome.
“Pity the fool following the truck...”
Pity the passengers in the station wagon who all **** their pants when it looked like the truck was going to turn that car into a fine paste!
It absolutely will happen. Truthfully it already HAS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
the only question at this point is can we do it to production cars for less than $2000 and not make them ugly.
Go ahead, start the clock. Heck shave a year. When self parking cars hit I predicted self driving would be in production by 2020. And I stand by it. Remember, THEY’RE ALREADY OUT THERE. Millions of miles driven on America’s roads by self driving cars already, and a car available to consumers (which I won’t call a production car because Tesla just doesn’t move enough units) that’s a good 90% there.
Frankly, you’re already wrong, you’re just not paying attention to the information.
Doubtful.
I’d imagine the truck stop hookers and pornography stores and truck stops like Stuckeys will kick up a fuss.
Re-read the definition of a self driving car:
“The vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire trip, with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. As this vehicle would control all functions from start to stop, including all parking functions, it could include unoccupied cars.”
We most certainly are not ‘already there’. Not by a long shot. The Tesla feature is 10% there at best.
Yes, I understand the technology is feasible, and there have been demonstration projects...but we also had a moon landing and I guarantee no consumer travel to the moon by 2021 either. There is a large chasm between a demonstration project and widespread adaptation.
This isn’t a whole lot different than the monthly ‘battery breakthrough’ we hear about...which is yes technically possible, but not at all scalable or commercially ready.
Five years will go by in the blink of an eye...and there will still be ‘test miles’ being driven.
if driverless cars and trucks are almost here.
why isn’t there such a thing as......
partially self steering trailers...
that ‘follow in the tracks of the tractor-wheels’,
instead of ‘short-cutting’
?
Yes we are. You just won’t admit it. You might as well erase self parking from that because it’s a feature that’s working it’s way down the price chain now. The Google car is doing it your list, a few of the other ones in the test phase. The Tesla car does the least BUT it’s out and available to consumers.
It’s not just demonstration project TESLA IS ON THE MARKET. You can BUY a car that can do most of your list RIGHT NOW. That’s a demonstration project. And they aren’t alone:
http://www.businessinsider.com/report-10-million-self-driving-cars-will-be-on-the-road-by-2020-2015-5-6
Fact is you’re wrong. Your prediction of what will never happen ALREADY HAS. The only question now is when will they be in mass production. BI agrees with me. History agrees with me. Only you don’t agree with me, and well, not to be rude, but that’s your problem not mine.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.