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> This industry literally won’t even pay for chassis they desperately need (and chassis are really cheap compared to trucks), doesn’t want to pay its workers, b

> This industry literally won’t even pay for chassis they desperately need (and chassis are really cheap compared to trucks), doesn’t want to pay its workers, but they are supposedly going to pay for millions of robot trucks Interesting perspective on autonomous freight. Even if self-driving trucks become technologically viable in the coming years, their economic viability may still significantly trail that of personal autonomous vehicles.

elefanten 5y ago
If the terminal unit economics convincingly work, capital will happily fund someone ready to burn cash to establish market power.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Exactly. It'll be someone like Amazon just bypassing the shipping/trucking companies entirely. Or imagine robotic trucks full of sweet crude cruising down from Alberta.
  - anamax 5y ago
    > Or imagine robotic trucks full of sweet crude cruising down from Alberta. It's unlikely that robotic trucks can compete with Buffet's railroads. (According to industry definitions, Albert's crude is not "sweet".) Then again, railroads can't compete with pipelines when it comes to transporting oil. Good thing we stopped that.
jsnodlin 5y ago
joe_the_user 5y ago
That's a good point, The thing is, self-driving trucks seem more plausible as something technologically viable compared to self-driving passenger cars. I've heard proposals to have loading docks directly off major highways, so the only driving the things would need to do would on highways (and even in special lanes). At the same time, I wonder what the advantage of this over just trains would be.
- worik 5y ago
  The part of truck driving that can be automated is the part of truck driving that is not a problem. (The article discuses this). Those parts are the easy parts It is all the other little hassles and problem solving that you need the driver for. Proper pay for everybody is the obvious solution. Are markets going to get us there? If so, why not now?
spfzero 5y ago
The article mentioned something about the company being liable for anything that happens if there is no driver. At first that didn't sound quite right to me, aren't they already liable to that degree? Then I remembered contractors etc. I do think, having a human in the loop who's life is on the line in any accident, will tend to be more creative in avoiding one than software would be. Training an AI to avoid simulated accidents is not a complete solution. For one thing, there will always be novel situations not trained for, and for another, the AI has no visceral fear of its own death.
- mwint 5y ago
  But that’s kind of like saying a calculator can never be as creative at solving math problems, because it will never have the visceral fear of failing an exam. Well… yeah, I guess, but it’s not really relevant. We don’t need creativity in avoiding accidents; the solution space is small: accelerate, brake, and/or steer. The machine knows the velocity vectors, accelerations, and sizes of all other objects on the road. That alone is a huge advantage over a human, which don’t look in all directions at once. You can probably drop the AI part altogether and have an always-running routine that takes over when collision is imminent based on relatively simple vector projection. Avoiding collision isn’t the hard part here, adhering to the myriad rules (spoken and unspoken) we’ve set up is. I think that’s probably why we all cringe at the Tesla videos of it doing crazy stuff, but somehow it’s not hitting stuff very often.
  - worik 5y ago
    > [Tesla's]...not hitting stuff very often That is the problem. 99% of the time not hitting stuff is 100% useless
    - mwint 5y ago
      To be clear, what I mean is that there is much less evidence of Tesla hitting stuff than we would expect from the videos of it doing “scary-looking” things. We may need to recognize that safe driving for a computer can look different than safe driving for a human, because of reaction time and awareness differences. It’s important we define safety properly for regulatory purposes. 99% is certainly not enough. But at some point Tesla, or another company, will get enough 9’s to surpass humans. It will happen.
cproctor 5y ago
Also, "when a person isn’t on board, the company is on the hook for everything that goes on in that truck." Having a driver is a way of offloading risk.

elefanten 5y ago

If the terminal unit economics convincingly work, capital will happily fund someone ready to burn cash to establish market power.

bombcar 5y ago
Exactly. It'll be someone like Amazon just bypassing the shipping/trucking companies entirely. Or imagine robotic trucks full of sweet crude cruising down from Alberta.
- anamax 5y ago
  > Or imagine robotic trucks full of sweet crude cruising down from Alberta. It's unlikely that robotic trucks can compete with Buffet's railroads. (According to industry definitions, Albert's crude is not "sweet".) Then again, railroads can't compete with pipelines when it comes to transporting oil. Good thing we stopped that.

jsnodlin 5y ago

joe_the_user 5y ago

That's a good point, The thing is, self-driving trucks seem more plausible as something technologically viable compared to self-driving passenger cars. I've heard proposals to have loading docks directly off major highways, so the only driving the things would need to do would on highways (and even in special lanes). At the same time, I wonder what the advantage of this over just trains would be.

worik 5y ago
The part of truck driving that can be automated is the part of truck driving that is not a problem. (The article discuses this). Those parts are the easy parts It is all the other little hassles and problem solving that you need the driver for. Proper pay for everybody is the obvious solution. Are markets going to get us there? If so, why not now?

spfzero 5y ago

The article mentioned something about the company being liable for anything that happens if there is no driver. At first that didn't sound quite right to me, aren't they already liable to that degree? Then I remembered contractors etc. I do think, having a human in the loop who's life is on the line in any accident, will tend to be more creative in avoiding one than software would be. Training an AI to avoid simulated accidents is not a complete solution. For one thing, there will always be novel situations not trained for, and for another, the AI has no visceral fear of its own death.

mwint 5y ago
But that’s kind of like saying a calculator can never be as creative at solving math problems, because it will never have the visceral fear of failing an exam. Well… yeah, I guess, but it’s not really relevant. We don’t need creativity in avoiding accidents; the solution space is small: accelerate, brake, and/or steer. The machine knows the velocity vectors, accelerations, and sizes of all other objects on the road. That alone is a huge advantage over a human, which don’t look in all directions at once. You can probably drop the AI part altogether and have an always-running routine that takes over when collision is imminent based on relatively simple vector projection. Avoiding collision isn’t the hard part here, adhering to the myriad rules (spoken and unspoken) we’ve set up is. I think that’s probably why we all cringe at the Tesla videos of it doing crazy stuff, but somehow it’s not hitting stuff very often.
- worik 5y ago
  > [Tesla's]...not hitting stuff very often That is the problem. 99% of the time not hitting stuff is 100% useless
  - mwint 5y ago
    To be clear, what I mean is that there is much less evidence of Tesla hitting stuff than we would expect from the videos of it doing “scary-looking” things. We may need to recognize that safe driving for a computer can look different than safe driving for a human, because of reaction time and awareness differences. It’s important we define safety properly for regulatory purposes. 99% is certainly not enough. But at some point Tesla, or another company, will get enough 9’s to surpass humans. It will happen.

cproctor 5y ago

Also, "when a person isn’t on board, the company is on the hook for everything that goes on in that truck." Having a driver is a way of offloading risk.