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Comment by arijun | Hacker News Reader

I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking. Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages. Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a great monetization scheme--no driver means you can get it to its destination more quickly and more cheaply.

(The thought is you'd hand off to a real driver once you get in to a city)

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Otto, Freightliner, and others are working on this.

Freightliner recently did a PR stunt where a self driving truck delivered a load of beer: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3134879/car-tech/self-d...

We'll see commercial self driving trucks before we see consumer self driving cars. Self driving trucks will first connect depots outside of cities, with humans solving the local driving problem, but eventually, they'll just completely drive themselves.

Otto did that test, not Freightliner.

Because it's all marketing bullshit. In fact that's a good indication that it's marketing bullshit - the fiction that the tip of the self-driving car spear will be consumer vehicles.

This... so much this

I am not so sure. It could also be the Christmas present Larry got for himself. At least more affordable than a rocket company.

I guess it is a mix of both. The SV elite pretending they can do another trick and keeping themselves busy and entertained and Google/ABC pretending they are a growth company (beyond search ads). Why should they bother with worldly billion dollar markets such as office communication equipment (which Microsoft is successfully attacking as we learned earlier today).

+1 Forget about trucks. What about trains? That's an even easier problem to solve than trucks.

Trains don't even need AI. It's the lack of good incentive (the required capital investment vs. potential for future savings) and angry drivers' unions that are stopping innovation there, I'm sure.

Is it though? Tesla is selling them.

Admittedly pre-orders are essentially marketing, but marketing of an actual product with intent to deliver, I'm not convinced it's "marketing bullshit".

I'm not seeing where they're claiming that. This is just the landing page targeted at consumers.

It's obvious that truck driving will be the automated sooner or later. But it will be a tough fight. How will the industry react/adapt?

Take a look at the distribution of current jobs [1]. What perspective can you give people working as a truck driver right now?

I believe, america first has to find an answer to this question before there will be automated trucks.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

Unfortunately, I'd expect a reactive response to this issue.

The industry will change/disappear overnight. Trucking will be 4x cheaper with 2x the transportation capacity when you remove the trucker. Doesn't matter how much unionized, etc. the industry is now. No group survives that.

How are costs divided between fuel, driver, vehicle capital?

I'm not sure the driver is the most expensive part...

But it's the part that limits the usable hours of a truck most.

A self driving truck can pretty much drive 24/7 but the driver has to rest more than half the day.

Truck drivers are allowed to work 70h per week.

I assumed all trucks stop at a truck stop and the driver sleeps while another driver continues the journey? That way the valuable truck and cargo never stop moving.

Is that not typically the case?

At least in continental europe single drivers are the vast majority.

In the US, sometimes truckers drive in teams and switch off, but I've never heard of them not sticking with their trucks. Trucks frequently sit idle while the driver sleeps.

Per mile 2011

Vehicle-based

Fuel & Oil Costs $0.590

Truck/Trailer Lease or Purchase Payments $0.189

Repair & Maintenance $0.152

Truck Insurance Premiums $0.067

Permits and Licenses $0.038

Tires $0.042

Tolls $0.017

Driver-based

Driver Wages $0.460

Driver Benefits $0.151

TOTAL $1.706

So driver ~ 36%

Big chunk!

Every major player has stuff on the roads. It' just not as sexy for the news as self driving google bubble cars.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy-se...

True, the controls challenges to a self driving truck may be easier than a personal car, but the stakes in the event of an accident are an order of magnitude greater in an autonomous truck. As proof, let's napkin-math some kinetic energies using 0.5mv^2.

If we are riding along in the current heaviest production car, the Rolls Royce Phantom Extended-wheelbase[1], which weighs in at 6000 pounds, and we are moving at 70 miles per hour, we have a kinetic energy of 1.33 Megajoules. [2]

Now, let's hop in the heaviest federally allowed tractor-trailer, which weighs 80,000 pounds, and get ourselves to 60 mph, a more reasonable speed for such a massive object. This comes to 13 Megajoules. [3]

The upshot is, one fully loaded truck moving at 60mph could cause the same amount of damage as 10 passenger cars all moving at 70mph. This means that as a firm, your liability is 10 times greater per vehicle. Insurance is 10 times more expensive. Regulation is 10 times as strict. At that level of risk, it'd be stupid to not put a human in the cab of your autonomous truck right? Just in case, and to shield yourselves from legal issues. But wait, why not just get him to drive and save yourself a lot of R&D money?

I work in the commercial trucking industry and real-world challenges mean this self-driving equation is not as lucrative as people believe. And we haven't even touched the Jobs Problem. Hence the focus on passenger vehicles. I do think autonomous trucking will become popular eventually, but this industry moves at a glacial pace for a reason.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_superlative...

[2]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.5+*+6000+pounds+*+70...

[3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.5+*+80000+pounds+*+6...

Amazon will be willing to take the risk to avoid the trucking unions. FedEx is pretty forward thinking and might also be willing to take the risk since they self insure. Same with UPS.

Once those folks prove that it works and it's safer than a human, the other companies will quickly fall as the insurance rates become lower than a human driven truck.

A self driving truck doesn't have to go 60mph to be as cost efficient as a human driven truck. They could be governed at 45 mph and still come out way ahead and cause far less damage if something does go wrong.

So now you have a greater disparity of vehicle speeds on a typical highway. Having just returned from driving on highways cutting through mountain ranges, I'm acutely aware of the "interesting" driving that results from having vehicles traveling at very different speeds on long uphill grades.

I think that we'll see a ton of companies going after this space, but they'll be as quiet as they can. Why? Jobs. You are directly competing with humans in this space. Truck driver is one of the most common jobs in many states[1].

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

"Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc."

Yes, it's easy and safe if competing traffic is only fellow truckers or other level-headed, observant drivers.

It's when you mix in the distracted, newbie, or skittish drivers that things get difficult. Long-haul truckers (the majority, the good ones) develop a sixth sense about such risks; I can't imagine thoroughly coding a software replacement.

About the sixth sense - does this not also apply to good doctors? And yet, they are easily outdiagnosed by many ML implementations. I can imagine deep learning to also gain this sixth sense. E.g. a cyclist in front of you looks to the left - a proficient driver predicts that cyclist might turn left very soon. Why should a self driving car/truck not learn the same?

Also, it sounds to me like the feat of controlling a beast of a truck in an emergency situation is easier for a computer.

In terms of execution, I agree. Decision making is where human experience wins. I think an experienced human driver will better predict the irrational things another human driver might do.

Yeah I was just adding to the point of my parent, who focused on the decision making part.

If you solve the consumer car problem, you own personal transportation. That's why. Besides, your premise is untrue anyway. Otto is the autonomous truck thing. Rolls Royce is the drone ship.

I think Otto/Uber and Mercedes are working on that.

While the benefits you listed are correct, you're missing the biggest one: relative cost of the sensor array. High-fidelity LIDAR tech is cost prohibitive to include in general consumer vehicles (hence taxi as a service), but it's much more practical for trucks which typically run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

inter-state.

Ie. you're gonna have to get new laws in place allowing empty vehicles in not just one, but many states.

Current driverless carpool plans might well only allow use when someone is in the vehicle, and they will likley only operate in a single state. The people-transport industry is also worth more than the goods transport industry.

> The people-transport industry is also worth more than the goods transport industry

[citation needed]

1% of the US population are truck drivers[1]. 13% of an average american's income is spent on transport [2].

I'm going to assert that 100% of the income of that 1% of the population is less than 13% of the whole population's income.

[1]: http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/ [2]: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm

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