I agree, it's interesting, I can't believe I didn't see it this way before. In the same way a company can easily justify investing in automation in a factory to improve the efficiency or remove hand labor in production line its the same for trucking and other situations where the vehicle is a tool, not a family car. It seems that if the tech existed, if a company could buy an autonomous 18 wheeler, then they could easily justify and get the capital to buy said trucks, thereby effectively replacing future labor costs with capital expenditures that they can depreciate. So in this situation the limiting factor isn't money, it's ability to deliver trucks. The current entire world production capacity of 18 wheelers is driven by current market demands, its not capable of replacing the entire world fleet of trucks in a year, or even 5. So we will be autonomous truck rate of manufacturing limited.
Just some napkin calcs. In the US alone there are a total of 12.5 million heavy trucks registered (1). There were 288k heavy trucks manufactured in the US last year, up 20% from the last year (2). That works out to 43 years to replace the current fleet at the current production rate. It also passes the gut check because you'd expect to see trucks manufactured in the 80s to still be running, not so much trucks from the 70s. So even if we double production rates, it would be 20 years before we can replace all heavy trucks. That won't meet demand.
My takeaway is that there is a lot of money to be made in an add on solution that can somehow add the value of autonomous driving without manufacturing a new truck. This is low hanging fruit. It's a big deal to build and tool up an automotive plant. It's a different story when your bolting on a few parts and adding complex software controls. You don't need million dollar presses, welding robots, etc. You just need a few key components sourced from existing suppliers (motor drives for steering, brakes) a computer, likely with some nvidia edge computing stuff, and some fancy software that is hard to make initially, but easy to install on millions of trucks with the above hardware. This is a much more easily scalable business than making whole trucks, and therefore has potential to capture more market share faster, and ultimately could meet the demand faster. In a rate limited situation anything to increase that rate adds value, and I argue that this business model has a lower cost of entry, is more easily scalable, and avoids many of the pitfalls of starting an automotive/truck company.
It'll be a combination of both new autonomous heavy trucks and retrofits I imagine.
1. https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/large-trucks-and-buses-nu....
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/412815/heavy-truck-produ...