7 ms·

It’s kind of surprising, I always imagined self driving trucks to be a more profitable business and “easier” challenge.

griffinkelly 8y ago
I agree, particularly with the huge demand for truck drivers, a hybrid model, allow the self driving to take over on the expressway/long haul, it could quickly become profitable pretty easily.
fullshark 8y ago
Perhaps the road from tech demo to minimal viable product is a lot longer than we think.
Fomite 8y ago
Surprises me as well. From the people I know in trucking related industries, they all thought that was clearly an important market and a prime adoption route.
philwelch 8y ago
From a technical standpoint, a lot of the effort is probably duplicated, except trucks are heavier and less maneuverable so they have some added challenges.
- valuearb 8y ago
  They also have regulatory issues, loading and unloading issues, safety issues. How do you deal with a self-driving truck thats just had it's load shift in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from human help? It's not even close to the same effort as self driving cars, which is already so hard they might be a decade away.
rtkwe 8y ago
If you limit the trucks to only highway driving and design depots for them they might be easier but I think once you start trying to drive them on smaller roads there's a lot of issues that crop up. First and foremost is that there's a lot more vehicle to keep modeled and the dynamics of how to drive the cab to safely maneuver the trailer might require a way better model of the environment and the position of the trailer.
- josh2600 8y ago
  Why wouldn't Uber just do long haul to a distribution point near a city and hire drivers for the last mile?
  - ellius 8y ago
    Seems like a brilliant way to make use of a semi-idling workforce.
  - griffinkelly 8y ago
    I think the big question in this game becomes to you want to be a logistics company, or do you want to become a technology company? Also, they don't let any Tom, Dick or Harry get a CDL, so that's a bit of a roadblock. Not like its too hard though.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Building all those distribution points would be fairly expensive and time intensive, a smaller market, and would still require contracting/employing a lot of medium distance drivers for the last X miles. 'Last mile' here is probably on the order of 20-50 miles at least with hundreds of distribution hubs.
    - UncleEntity 8y ago
      Most of the big carriers already have the distribution points set up all over the place with a bunch of local drivers covering the last mile. I (sort of) worked for Swift ~10 years ago and a lot of what I did was "drop and hook" at regional terminals or big warehouses. It was kind of uncommon to live (un)load -- mostly just drop the trailer I brought in where they told me, pick up an empty/loaded trailer and be on my way. When I ran reefers it was totally the opposite, super rare to not have to live unload. A lot of the big places would have pre-loaded trailers waiting but delivery points were usually much smaller so didn't have a bunch of space for trailers to sit around. And then there were the times when I was live loading produce in the middle of a (literal) field...
      - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

I agree, particularly with the huge demand for truck drivers, a hybrid model, allow the self driving to take over on the expressway/long haul, it could quickly become profitable pretty easily.

fullshark 8y ago

Perhaps the road from tech demo to minimal viable product is a lot longer than we think.

Fomite 8y ago

Surprises me as well. From the people I know in trucking related industries, they all thought that was clearly an important market and a prime adoption route.

philwelch 8y ago

From a technical standpoint, a lot of the effort is probably duplicated, except trucks are heavier and less maneuverable so they have some added challenges.

valuearb 8y ago
They also have regulatory issues, loading and unloading issues, safety issues. How do you deal with a self-driving truck thats just had it's load shift in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from human help? It's not even close to the same effort as self driving cars, which is already so hard they might be a decade away.

rtkwe 8y ago

If you limit the trucks to only highway driving and design depots for them they might be easier but I think once you start trying to drive them on smaller roads there's a lot of issues that crop up. First and foremost is that there's a lot more vehicle to keep modeled and the dynamics of how to drive the cab to safely maneuver the trailer might require a way better model of the environment and the position of the trailer.

josh2600 8y ago
Why wouldn't Uber just do long haul to a distribution point near a city and hire drivers for the last mile?
- ellius 8y ago
  Seems like a brilliant way to make use of a semi-idling workforce.
- griffinkelly 8y ago
  I think the big question in this game becomes to you want to be a logistics company, or do you want to become a technology company? Also, they don't let any Tom, Dick or Harry get a CDL, so that's a bit of a roadblock. Not like its too hard though.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  Building all those distribution points would be fairly expensive and time intensive, a smaller market, and would still require contracting/employing a lot of medium distance drivers for the last X miles. 'Last mile' here is probably on the order of 20-50 miles at least with hundreds of distribution hubs.
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    Most of the big carriers already have the distribution points set up all over the place with a bunch of local drivers covering the last mile. I (sort of) worked for Swift ~10 years ago and a lot of what I did was "drop and hook" at regional terminals or big warehouses. It was kind of uncommon to live (un)load -- mostly just drop the trailer I brought in where they told me, pick up an empty/loaded trailer and be on my way. When I ran reefers it was totally the opposite, super rare to not have to live unload. A lot of the big places would have pre-loaded trailers waiting but delivery points were usually much smaller so didn't have a bunch of space for trailers to sit around. And then there were the times when I was live loading produce in the middle of a (literal) field...
    - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]