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I think the innovation is the removal of manual handling involved in transferring goods to a train or between trucks at a logistics hub. By making the modules s
by willyt 4y ago
I think the innovation is the removal of manual handling involved in transferring goods to a train or between trucks at a logistics hub. By making the modules small enough that they will ultimately be able to trundle autonomously at low speed from the loading bay at a small factory to the hub and then travel at relatively high speed to the end destination without requiring sophisticated AI to guess what the humans around it will do. The modules can pop then pop up in dense city centre environments and postal workers can distribute parcels the last few hundred meters or the module can trundle autonomously for the last few hundred meters at very low speeds on battery power. Or likewise trundle around and between manufacturing areas at low speeds transporting parts along a supply chain.
- jsnell 4y agoThat's not what this is though. These carriages will just be going from delivery hub to delivery hub. The deliveries to hubs will be by trucks. The last mile transport to stores will be by van or bike. And that's a metaphorical last mile; the density of the hubs appears to be pretty low, with e.g. 2-3 hubs in Zürich. The thing they claim makes this work is bundling all deliveries going to the same receiver (across all suppliers) into the same carriage on the sending end, which then makes it easy to optimize that last mile delivery with small vehicles. This doesn't seem very compelling.