> Freight generally needs to be handle all of the problems that a cab does (turning, stoplights, other cars, getting from point A to point B, etc.), mostly because pretty much all freight trucks need to go through a town/city at some point.
Freight consists of both long and short haul, with different needs and approaches. Your point applies to the "last mile" delivery phase, which may or may not be a significant part of the operation.
In fact, many big stores like Walmart, Costco, Aldi, and the like are placed pretty close to an interstate exit.
I would guess that this allows significant reduction in costs, as the operators don't need to switch from their optimized long haul vehicles (big trailers, etc) to more maneuvarable, less efficient (per unit weight of goods) trucks for the last mile stage.
There is plenty of freight that is carried on highways over long distances with low traffic volumes, in a similar role to rail freight.
> Additionally, they need to be able to drive at night in areas without much lighting,
During winter at higher latitudes a lot of driving is at night. As for lighting, plenty of city streets are dark and have poor lighting at night.
> they need to drive for hours and hours on end, instead of just 5-45minutes, etc.
So? Fatigue is something that affects human drivers. There should be no serious differences for an autonomous vehicle driving 10 30 minute trips and one 5 hour one, modulo start and stop. In fact, if anything, longer duration trips tend to involve a greater fraction of highway usage that does not require significant brake usage, turning, etc.
> Finally, they are 40+ feet long (instead of being around 15 feet long) and have much less maneuverability and a much longer stopping distance/time.
I agree with this.