48k miles in the interstate = 80k km, 400k posts, 4 billion dollars (and you can start regionally)
could also run semi-autonomous convoys where a robot truck follows a human truck, extending sensor range
The in cab electronic log system is still largely ignored because states want money from inspections, no autonomous system can handle a tandem adjustment, and everyone wants to put sensors all over roads that barely see replacement let alone investment and dont have maintenance factored in.
Edit: ultimately these companies miss the mark. Autonomous cannot cost more to maintain and operate than traditional fleets and owner operator/independents. It can't force shipping lots to rearchitect the entire parking lot, it can't demand world class networking and sensor systems in jeffrey Wyoming, and it can't wave away traditional safe operation practices with "autonomous"
It involves moving the trailer's rear axles forward or backward based on the load's weight distribution.
Seems like something that should be pretty amenable to automation, especially if you can modify the truck.
I don't know how often signs are replaced, but at some point every sign should come with an RFID chip that encodes information about it, although you can probably just glue a chip onto a sign as well.
We scoff at Tesla's self driving claims and the valley between their "FSD" and actual required products, but they'll keep hammering at it. There's probably a trillion dollars of valuation for solving it. Musk's current managerial incompetence aside, Tesla DOES have the data collection platform to get all the data needed for self-driving, especially the "easier" stuff.
Once enough cargo is moving along a route, if there's sections of that route that are not ideal for automated movement, that will be brought to attention of the transportation agency.
The value proposition is obvious: generally, interstate highways are almost totally unutilized from about 10pm to 5am (outside of cities). 6-7 hours of transit that could be used (and offload the transit from rush hour times when passenger cars demand it more).
Alternatively a drone flying ahead of a truck with cameras could augment the sensing on the truck and extend the sensor range. Deploy the drone(s) from a station on the truck. 2-3 drones per truck for redundancy and charging. Tho maybe drones can not fly at 65mph for long in bad weather.
Driverless trains put about half the system logic outside the vehicles and those things operate mostly incident free
if gov owns the sensors, they no longer have to beg AV operators for crash data