9 ms·

I wouldn't be surprised if they start out with "last mile" drivers to deal with off-highway driving.

by patejam 10y ago

thescriptkiddie 10y ago
But the last mile is where driverless trucks are most useful. For long haul, you can just use trains.
- HorizonXP 10y ago
  Tell that to the companies that ship items long-haul via trucks. It confuses me too, but somehow, I guess the economics work out.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > For long haul, you can just use trains. RoLa (Rollende Landstraße) as we call this in Germany, or just transporting the flatbed carriages, requires a SHITLOAD of manual work, unlike containers where you don't even need people on the locos in the yard anymore. Not to mention that long-haul-via-rail is only viable in the US... in Europe, it virtually doesn't exist anymore. It just isn't profitable due to various external conditions: 1) train track pricing is prohibitively expensive 2) freight trains don't get priority over passenger trains - quite the contrary. If you have any time-sensitive stuff, better transport it via road instead. 3) rail tracks are massively overbooked. One single delay and the entire system grinds to a screeching halt. 4) there is no such thing as cross-Europe locomotives/conductors. There might be multi-system-capable locos, but there is not a single loco on the market able to serve the entire fragmented European railroad technology. There may be "just" 15/25 kV AC + 1k5/3kV DC, but every country needs their own roof collectors because they're NOT compatible (some countries don't even have roof collectors, but 3rd rails or sideway rails for the low-voltage DC stuff, and the DC stuff usually doesn't pack a lot of power so you can't really use them for any heavy load), but the real tech problem is the load of bollocks called signalling/security system, every country has their own, including Germany alone with FOUR popular systems (classic form signals, light-based signals, LZB/PZB and ETCS, in addition to various customizations in Eastern Germany and the S-Bahn tracks). Not to mention the conductors which have to know all the signalling systems AND all the languages (compared to aviation where English is the standard worldwide), and they need to be expensively re-certified... Yeah, ETCS, I hear you, but ETCS is a joke that would require literally hundreds of billions to retrofit across the major transit routes in Europe, but that won't happen - we Europeans haven't even managed to get our freight carriages to silent brakes yet! 5) There are still restrictions like maximum train lengths and the plain fact that European freight carriages only carry a pneumatic line for the brakes, but no data lines for controlling middle/back locos - so there's no technical way of extending train lengths because there's simply no loco combo capable of pulling >700m length heavy freight carriages with 3 locos on the front and no way to control a pushing loco in the back of the train. Simple physics, the good old screw coupling just can't support more load. There are alternatives (C-AKv coupling, it's high load AND compatible with the old coupling) but once again a retrofit would cost billions (see #4)... Trains might be more efficient from an environmental and human-resources POV, but they're fucked up on any economic scale - and politicians all over Europe don't give a single fuck, instead they are all letting their rail systems rot to pieces and squeeze every tiny penny from the rail companies to fix up their even more rotten state budgets!
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    > 2) freight trains don't get priority over passenger trains Freight trains get priority here and it still doesn't make sense to ship by train. Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country, and they need to be able to ship to tiny random stores all over the place. It makes more sense to send one truck that can stop anywhere there's a road than send it out via train and then transfer to a local truck, which might be sitting unused the rest of the time.
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      > Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country Quite the contrary, the US is better suited for rail than the rest of the world, at least for cross-country moving of goods (one single area of law, no customs crap to deal with, the only thing I'm not sure is signalling and interoperability of locomotives on rail systems in different states). Trains are perfect for inter-city travel, the first/last mile should be handled with trucks unless the facility is so large that it can source or sink a huge number of trains (e.g. automobile, steel factories, coal mines, fossil power plants).
      - peterwwillis 10y ago
        How long do you imagine it takes to unload a single car or two cars in a given city and move on to the next city? Once that "last mile" is handled, what else is that truck going to do until the next train shipment arrives? It'll sit doing nothing. If it moved on to another city, it could have just been loaded somewhere else and didn't need to be loaded at last mile. Trains have several single points of failure for a larger load. When there is a problem, all of the load is affected, it takes longer to repair, and problems with both the rails and the trains happen regularly. And trains have more complex maneuvering than trucks; switching lines is a non-trivial time-consuming matter and operators have a tough job just on the existing lines. The fact remains we don't have enough rail to service most of the country, and nobody is paying for new rail, not to mention the issue of fitting more track on the existing land and bridges used for rail. Demand has been increasing steadily on rail, and only so much traffic can possibly run on the rails - which are shared with passenger trains, btw. To switch to trains you'd be adding 230% more traffic to the rails.
- patrickg_zill 10y ago
  Actually you can't, for a lot of goods. Reason is that the railroad won't give you the same guarantees and trackability a truck will. Example: you have refrigerated items (let's say a shipment of fresh fruit) that has to be maintained at a constant temperature and you want it delivered to your customer on Thursday when you ship Sunday night. Truck: not a problem, and you can easily get updates all the time from dispatch (or if there is a GPS unit on the truck, immediately). Railroad: maybe they will get it there, maybe they won't. If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    > If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will. Insurance?
    - _pmf_ 10y ago
      > Insurance? If the thing you insure against actually happens, premiums go up to the point of it being uneconomic.
  - amatix 10y ago
    > Railroad: maybe they will get it there, maybe they won't. > If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will. Sounds like both of those are more to do with shit rail companies than inherent downsides of rail (or upsides of trucking)?
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Just in time delivery by rail works in Europe, perhaps because the track is maintained to a high standard and can be relied upon, and the timetable adhered to to avoid delaying passenger trains.
  - pm24601 10y ago
    Sorry to burst your bubble here -- but the railroads were doing exactly that since the days of refrigeration via blocks of ice. ( http://californiabountiful.com/features/article.aspx?arID=563 http://californiabountiful.com/features/article.aspx?arID=56... ) > Now retired after more than 30 years in the produce business, Wolf noted that farmers began growing iceberg lettuce in the region just prior to the 1930s. The demand for the hearty lettuce variety soon took off through the use of refrigerated rail cars.
- tomlock 10y ago
  In Australia this isn't the case - the infrastructure doesn't service a lot of the land area.
- jonknee 10y ago
  > But the last mile is where driverless trucks are most useful. For long haul, you can just use trains. And yet the highways are full of semi trailers...
  - galdosdi 10y ago
    IIRC because more of the highway cost is subsidized by the taxpayer, not necessarily because the cost is actually lower... In the US, especially outside of the northeast, most interstate highways are not tolled, so users of the road don't pay any more for its maintenance than non-users do. But someone is still paying for it. Taxpayers who don't use the roads are effectively subsidizing those who do. By contrast, railways usually own their rails and are obliged to maintain them themselves, and thus have to fold those costs into the price. This is really unfair.
- raw_creations 10y ago
  Trains can't haul produce and other refrigerated product.
  - peterwwillis 10y ago
    The Juice Train can, as does the "Salad Shooter" train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train
michaelbuckbee 10y ago
This was my thought as well. That a new 'tugboat captain' or 'harbor pilot' type role emerges for last mile driving.
- braythwayt 10y ago
  But here’s the question: Do these ‘last mile’ drivers sit in the cab? Or operate the rigs from thousands of miles away, like drone pilots, with displays showing 360 degrees around the rig and access to all of its sensors? Last mile driving may not look anything like truck driving.
  - quanticle 10y ago
    Or, alternatively, do they wait at truck stops on the edge of town and meet the trucks as they come in (much like harbor pilots meet container ships at port entrances)?
    - braythwayt 10y ago
      I don’t think so. Once you’ve already automates a truck, you have a lot more information to convey than what’s out the windshield, and you are liberated from needing to turn a steering wheel or push foot pedals. There’s no reason to build a cab into the truck that is only used for the last mile. Telepresence will do just fine.
      - quanticle 10y ago
        If that's the case, then why aren't cargo ships already automated to this extent? It seems like automating a container vessel would be even easier - there are far fewer things to run into on the water (even in a busy port) than there are on a busy highway.
        jon_richards 10y ago
        Pirates? You need a crew on cargo ships regardless of whether they are automated or not.
duck 10y ago
It actually talks about that in the article: We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over.

I wouldn't be surprised if they start out with "last mile" drivers to deal with off-highway driving.

by patejam 10y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they start out with "last mile" drivers to deal with off-highway driving.

thescriptkiddie 10y ago

But the last mile is where driverless trucks are most useful. For long haul, you can just use trains.

HorizonXP 10y ago
Tell that to the companies that ship items long-haul via trucks. It confuses me too, but somehow, I guess the economics work out.
mschuster91 10y ago
> For long haul, you can just use trains. RoLa (Rollende Landstraße) as we call this in Germany, or just transporting the flatbed carriages, requires a SHITLOAD of manual work, unlike containers where you don't even need people on the locos in the yard anymore. Not to mention that long-haul-via-rail is only viable in the US... in Europe, it virtually doesn't exist anymore. It just isn't profitable due to various external conditions: 1) train track pricing is prohibitively expensive 2) freight trains don't get priority over passenger trains - quite the contrary. If you have any time-sensitive stuff, better transport it via road instead. 3) rail tracks are massively overbooked. One single delay and the entire system grinds to a screeching halt. 4) there is no such thing as cross-Europe locomotives/conductors. There might be multi-system-capable locos, but there is not a single loco on the market able to serve the entire fragmented European railroad technology. There may be "just" 15/25 kV AC + 1k5/3kV DC, but every country needs their own roof collectors because they're NOT compatible (some countries don't even have roof collectors, but 3rd rails or sideway rails for the low-voltage DC stuff, and the DC stuff usually doesn't pack a lot of power so you can't really use them for any heavy load), but the real tech problem is the load of bollocks called signalling/security system, every country has their own, including Germany alone with FOUR popular systems (classic form signals, light-based signals, LZB/PZB and ETCS, in addition to various customizations in Eastern Germany and the S-Bahn tracks). Not to mention the conductors which have to know all the signalling systems AND all the languages (compared to aviation where English is the standard worldwide), and they need to be expensively re-certified... Yeah, ETCS, I hear you, but ETCS is a joke that would require literally hundreds of billions to retrofit across the major transit routes in Europe, but that won't happen - we Europeans haven't even managed to get our freight carriages to silent brakes yet! 5) There are still restrictions like maximum train lengths and the plain fact that European freight carriages only carry a pneumatic line for the brakes, but no data lines for controlling middle/back locos - so there's no technical way of extending train lengths because there's simply no loco combo capable of pulling >700m length heavy freight carriages with 3 locos on the front and no way to control a pushing loco in the back of the train. Simple physics, the good old screw coupling just can't support more load. There are alternatives (C-AKv coupling, it's high load AND compatible with the old coupling) but once again a retrofit would cost billions (see #4)... Trains might be more efficient from an environmental and human-resources POV, but they're fucked up on any economic scale - and politicians all over Europe don't give a single fuck, instead they are all letting their rail systems rot to pieces and squeeze every tiny penny from the rail companies to fix up their even more rotten state budgets!
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  > 2) freight trains don't get priority over passenger trains Freight trains get priority here and it still doesn't make sense to ship by train. Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country, and they need to be able to ship to tiny random stores all over the place. It makes more sense to send one truck that can stop anywhere there's a road than send it out via train and then transfer to a local truck, which might be sitting unused the rest of the time.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    > Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country Quite the contrary, the US is better suited for rail than the rest of the world, at least for cross-country moving of goods (one single area of law, no customs crap to deal with, the only thing I'm not sure is signalling and interoperability of locomotives on rail systems in different states). Trains are perfect for inter-city travel, the first/last mile should be handled with trucks unless the facility is so large that it can source or sink a huge number of trains (e.g. automobile, steel factories, coal mines, fossil power plants).
    - peterwwillis 10y ago
      How long do you imagine it takes to unload a single car or two cars in a given city and move on to the next city? Once that "last mile" is handled, what else is that truck going to do until the next train shipment arrives? It'll sit doing nothing. If it moved on to another city, it could have just been loaded somewhere else and didn't need to be loaded at last mile. Trains have several single points of failure for a larger load. When there is a problem, all of the load is affected, it takes longer to repair, and problems with both the rails and the trains happen regularly. And trains have more complex maneuvering than trucks; switching lines is a non-trivial time-consuming matter and operators have a tough job just on the existing lines. The fact remains we don't have enough rail to service most of the country, and nobody is paying for new rail, not to mention the issue of fitting more track on the existing land and bridges used for rail. Demand has been increasing steadily on rail, and only so much traffic can possibly run on the rails - which are shared with passenger trains, btw. To switch to trains you'd be adding 230% more traffic to the rails.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Actually you can't, for a lot of goods. Reason is that the railroad won't give you the same guarantees and trackability a truck will. Example: you have refrigerated items (let's say a shipment of fresh fruit) that has to be maintained at a constant temperature and you want it delivered to your customer on Thursday when you ship Sunday night. Truck: not a problem, and you can easily get updates all the time from dispatch (or if there is a GPS unit on the truck, immediately). Railroad: maybe they will get it there, maybe they won't. If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will.
- aidenn0 10y ago
  > If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will. Insurance?
  - _pmf_ 10y ago
    > Insurance? If the thing you insure against actually happens, premiums go up to the point of it being uneconomic.
- amatix 10y ago
  > Railroad: maybe they will get it there, maybe they won't. > If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will. Sounds like both of those are more to do with shit rail companies than inherent downsides of rail (or upsides of trucking)?
- Symbiote 10y ago
  Just in time delivery by rail works in Europe, perhaps because the track is maintained to a high standard and can be relied upon, and the timetable adhered to to avoid delaying passenger trains.
- pm24601 10y ago
  Sorry to burst your bubble here -- but the railroads were doing exactly that since the days of refrigeration via blocks of ice. ( http://californiabountiful.com/features/article.aspx?arID=563 http://californiabountiful.com/features/article.aspx?arID=56... ) > Now retired after more than 30 years in the produce business, Wolf noted that farmers began growing iceberg lettuce in the region just prior to the 1930s. The demand for the hearty lettuce variety soon took off through the use of refrigerated rail cars.
tomlock 10y ago
In Australia this isn't the case - the infrastructure doesn't service a lot of the land area.
jonknee 10y ago
> But the last mile is where driverless trucks are most useful. For long haul, you can just use trains. And yet the highways are full of semi trailers...
- galdosdi 10y ago
  IIRC because more of the highway cost is subsidized by the taxpayer, not necessarily because the cost is actually lower... In the US, especially outside of the northeast, most interstate highways are not tolled, so users of the road don't pay any more for its maintenance than non-users do. But someone is still paying for it. Taxpayers who don't use the roads are effectively subsidizing those who do. By contrast, railways usually own their rails and are obliged to maintain them themselves, and thus have to fold those costs into the price. This is really unfair.
raw_creations 10y ago
Trains can't haul produce and other refrigerated product.
- peterwwillis 10y ago
  The Juice Train can, as does the "Salad Shooter" train. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juice_Train

michaelbuckbee 10y ago

This was my thought as well. That a new 'tugboat captain' or 'harbor pilot' type role emerges for last mile driving.

braythwayt 10y ago
But here’s the question: Do these ‘last mile’ drivers sit in the cab? Or operate the rigs from thousands of miles away, like drone pilots, with displays showing 360 degrees around the rig and access to all of its sensors? Last mile driving may not look anything like truck driving.
- quanticle 10y ago
  Or, alternatively, do they wait at truck stops on the edge of town and meet the trucks as they come in (much like harbor pilots meet container ships at port entrances)?
  - braythwayt 10y ago
    I don’t think so. Once you’ve already automates a truck, you have a lot more information to convey than what’s out the windshield, and you are liberated from needing to turn a steering wheel or push foot pedals. There’s no reason to build a cab into the truck that is only used for the last mile. Telepresence will do just fine.
    - quanticle 10y ago
      If that's the case, then why aren't cargo ships already automated to this extent? It seems like automating a container vessel would be even easier - there are far fewer things to run into on the water (even in a busy port) than there are on a busy highway.
      - jon_richards 10y ago
        Pirates? You need a crew on cargo ships regardless of whether they are automated or not.

duck 10y ago

It actually talks about that in the article: We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over.