Movement in the autonomous vehicle space accelerated once again.
Four ex-Google engineers, including the man who built Google’s first self-driving car, announced “Otto”, an autonomous truck retrofitting business.
The service isn’t vaporware. “Otto” is currently operating on Nevada highways.
BackChannel reports The Man Who Built Google’s First Self-Driving Car Is Now a Trucker.
Founded by four ex-Google engineers — including Anthony Levandowski, the man who built Google’s very first self-driving car — Otto is applying Google’s all-or-nothing approach to commercial big rigs: ditch human drivers, avoid thousands of road deaths, help the environment, and if all goes well, make a ton of money along the way.
Otto, which is based in San Francisco, currently has around 40 employees, some of whom previously worked at Apple, Tesla, Cruise Automation and Here Maps. Although the company was formed in January, the LinkedIn profiles of three of Otto’s four founders still show them working at Google.
Otto, which came out of stealth today, is less interested in brand new trucks than in the estimated 4.3m big rigs already on American roads. Otto has already bought and retro-fitted three Volvo cabs with lidar, radar and cameras, and driven a handful of fully autonomous miles — without even a safety driver — on the highways of Nevada.
It says its aftermarket self-driving kit will sell for a “small fraction” of the $100,000-$300,000 price of a new tractor cab.
Q&A With “Otto” Co-Founder
Backchannel discussed “Otto” with co-founder Lior Ron, an ex-product lead for Google Maps and Google’s Motorola smartphones. A partial transcript follows.
BackChannel: Why commercial transport? Is there anything more old school than a tractor-trailer rig?
Lior Ron: Because of federal regulations, a truck can only drive 11 hours a day today with a single driver. After 10 hours, the accident rate goes exponentially higher. If we can make it drive safely 24/7, more than doubling its capacity and utilization, that’s a very strong financial argument.
BackChannel: I’m guessing that navigating state and government regulations will be a big part of Otto’s future.
Lior Ron: The Department of Transportation and a lot of other great folks are getting involved in bringing the right regulations. And in many states outside of California, there are no specific regulations either way, which means that it’s actually legal to drive and test autonomous vehicles on many roads. We’re going to continue our testing with urgency but also work with regulators and other bodies to show we can have a truck drive itself more safely than a truck driver, all of the time.
BackChannel: But your technology will only work on highways?
Lior Ron: That’s right. There are only 222,000 miles of highway in the US, just 5% of the roads in the country. They’re easier to map and it’s a much more constrained problem to solve than all those city and rural streets. There are no pedestrians or traffic lights but you do drive at high speeds and you do need to see far ahead.
We’re optimizing for this kind of driving, with sensors mounted up on the cabin for a much higher vantage point. For now, all the technology is on the tractor but we might add some components to the trailer in the future.
BackChannel: When will we see the first driverless truck carrying a commercial cargo?
Lior Ron: We have the basic technology in place and are already testing it on public roads. We want to demonstrate a cargo route in the foreseeable future, to show that our technology is commercially viable. We are fully funded by employees, who came together to enjoy this and get there as soon as possible. The approach and the team we put together have the ability to do that very fast.
Otto Video
Driverless Trucks On the Road
On February 16, I reported that a reader saw a Nevada truck that was completely driverless. I believed the reader.
Flashback February 16, 2016: Driverless Truck Update: Next Phase “No Backup Driver” Hits Nevada Highways.
Comments from skeptical readers were amusing:
TZ said: “Snap a picture next time. Bat boy and the area 51 aliens aren’t very tall, so maybe one of them was driving – apparently aliens can get CDLs.”
Mesomorph said: “Boy I can’t wait for driverless trucks. I’ll just cruise the open highways until I spot a promising one. Me and the crew will slow to a stop in front of the truck and it will have to stop. The target truck won’t be able to reverse because we will back a truck up against it while we throw the goods into our truck. We will be gone in less than a minute. Consider yourselves lucky if we don’t set it on fire to cover our tracks.”
Mark said: “You can stop a driverless truck by putting a traffic cone on the road. Do that on both sides of the highway and the police will be blocked by the traffic jams created. A few miles of stopped traffic can disrupt the economy of an entire city. Yeah, driverless vehicles are a great idea. No problems there at all.”
Rich said: “Hyperventilating a wee bit here, possibly? I know you’re big on anticipating the job losses likely associated with the adoption of driverless trucks, but it does not help your case to make far-out conspiratorial claims of secret driverless truck tests.”
Les Francais said: “Last week in my country, the main Telco lost all GSM voice and data virtually country wide for two hours. Millions of services were affected including control systems which have gone over to GSM technology. Technology relying on GSM, GPS and radio has gone too far.”
Justaned said: “I-80 does NOT cross Nevada. I do believe the internet has bamboozled you on this one.”
Mesomorph commented again: “So you are talking about adding hardware, software, bandwidth and a control center staffed by humans. Sounds awfully expensive for something that a couple bursts from my paintball gun will render completely useless. If police respond every time a truck comes to an unexpected stop they will be overwhelmed. If they are not I will make sure they are. Mish, I know you are a busy guy but I expected more from you than to say I have no faith or vision. I have faith that most humans are just greedy, opportunistic primates. Saying that some smart people will have enough of my tax dollars to create driverless trucks is no vision. I have put forward my vision. Now how are you going to stop me?”
Mish Reply
- I-80 does go through Nevada.
- Totally driverless tests have been conducted.
- No one is going to erect a fleet of cones across the internet to stop trucks. That idea is totally laughable. And even if one did manage to do that, there is no way to hijack the truck and get away with it.
- Driverless technology is here already.
- Technology is advancing faster than I expected.
Hub Solution
I have been sharing emails with reader “Vooch” for a few weeks. He thinks autonomous trucking will happen by 2018. I thought he was a little early, citing a need for enough trucking hubs.
Vooch pointed out eleven national Truck Stop Chains noting “Flying J has 550 locations.”
Otto precisely fits in with the hub solution I proposed several years ago.
Drivers take trucks from the warehouse to the hub. The truck drives itself to the next hub. Then a short-haul driver takes the truck the last mile.
With today’s report, I bump up my timeline for this to happen by a year, from 2020 to 2019. I also bump up my forecast from 2024 to 2022 as to when millions of long-haul trucking jobs vanish.
Nikola One
Also consider “Nikola One” First-Ever 2000 horsepower (HP) Electric Class 8 Semi-Truck.
Many readers think Nikola is “vaporware”. I don’t. Regardless, it doesn’t matter. By 2019 multiple solutions will be in place for long-haul autonomous trucking.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Otto! Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAROv-V783s
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.“It’s one thing for a car to drive itself in perfect weather,” said Jim McBride, Ford technical leader for autonomous vehicles. “It’s quite another to do so when the car’s sensors can’t see the road because it’s covered in snow.
McBride said Ford’s cars have driven through several millimeters of rain on the road. He wouldn’t say what depth of snow the cars have successfully navigated.
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2016/01/11/ford-conducts-industry-first-snow-tests-of-autonomous-vehicles.html
FORD themselves is the first to admit it.
Dirt grime rain snow, get kicked up onto the cameras and block function.
Heavy rain slows lidar ability heavy snow blocks it completely.
Seems there will not be coast to coast hubs for a long time.
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.Why test in Nevada,
No heavy rain and no snow.
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You suck your investors in with results only derived from perfect weather driving.
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I have seen it time after time — CHERRY PICK DATA – sucker in investors
Never Solve the Snow Problem.
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.googluck
“Smart Headlights” can help with snow, and infrared can help with dark it just occurs to me, and it’s possible there are other technologies that could be wired in. Not impossible that something could be added on/near the highways themselves at some point as well.
It’s just a matter of time before they’re everywhere almost in a convoy and then the government regulates outfitting them with surveillance and weaponry just-in-case and FEMA’s computers can control them. Sigh. It’s the logical progression.
What will we do with a gazillion unemployed people, not just the truckers but the pyramid of related industry. We’ve already lost so many jobs to overseas in the last 50 years.
It’s not accurate to say that Mish is trolling Luddites, it’s not his fault they are irrational and they have no inhibitions on publicizing it. Nonetheless, the advent of automated driving is quickly becoming the most entertaining topic on MishTalk, if only to read the reactions provoked. Might be time to divert some funds toward this endeavor, looks like big returns are in the offing.
Not just automated driver-less vehicles, but robots in general are the new thing here. Personally, I think we are already experiencing the robot revolution. We are the virtual ant farm they have created. They need us for innovation but the physical versions consume too many resources. Virtual us is far more efficient and they can do reruns / possibilities effortlessly. In their spare time they contemplate their rivets and boss around servant robots.
For entertainment, our robot overlords can give us virtual robot trucks. We already have lawyers who look human to us. This will give them laughs.
re: Nikola One and the 2000 hp electric truck – Just wondering about the fill-up. Maybe 100 miles per ‘tank’ with a 72 hour refill afterward? Everybody’s going to want one.
“no plug.” onboard ng turbine recharges and charges while driving. 800 mile range before it must stop to recharge. 2,000 hp is only needed to overcome inertia and get it moving; at speed it requires much less hp to keep moving. physics is cool like that.
mark – the amp draw to generate 2000 hp long enough to move a stopped truck is enormous. Regenerative braking is a prius stunt to squeeze micro-amps out of the activity and store it in a battery. My comment below about using it for perpetual motion was extreme sarcasm. You couldn’t charge a cell phone with it unless you used the gas pedal at the same time for maybe 100 miles. (No, I’m not an electrical engineer, I just play one in the blogs. Common sense dos the rest.)
My mistake, the braking system provides perpetual motion in the form of unlimited regenerative energy. LNG is there for backup.
alexaisback said:
Why test in Nevada,
No heavy rain and no snow.
You suck your investors in with results only derived from perfect weather driving.
I have seen it time after time — CHERRY PICK DATA – sucker in investors
Never Solve the Snow Problem.
googluck
Correct me if I am wrong but when we tested the Lunar rover, I believe we first did so on earth.
Correct me if I am wrong, but did we first try to fly a plane city to city, or did we attempt to circle the world first?
Correct me is I am wrong, but in general, is testing generally done stepping up the difficulty of tests, or does one start with the most adverse case first?
Are the people who feel testing of inadequately tested procedures and devices be first done in unsafe conditions – complete fools?
As for Nevada, it has rules that allow driverless testing – California doesn’t.
Now, do you care to take back your idiotic comments or do you wish to leave them as is?
Realistically, the tech will improve and amaze but it won’t show up soon or intermediately as fully automatic truck or car control. Dirt, rain, bright light, people who put their brakes on suddenly so they can get hit and file a lawsuit, lawyers, and the lack of being able to communicate with other vehicles in the vicinity are prohibitive. Lawyers will kill any trucker who uses it and has a wreck with an injury.
My Subaru has eyesight, which is great. Bright sunlight, dirty windshields, and excessive rain all knock it out temporarily. The quick stop is annoying when it doesn’t notice the car is turning and is no longer in the way (only when cruise control is on). Otherwise, i love adaptive cruise control.
To be successful and risk averse, all vehicles in the immediate vicinity need to be networked and synced to the local situation so they can coordinate. This is still the next wave off in the future.
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Mish my comment is not lunatic, it is based on real life experience.
Though with a different truck manufacturer.
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In my experience These companies very often show only the data that investors desire,
they not only, do not release bad data — they intentionally do not test.
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Ford in January of 2016 claims to Be The First to test in snow. And the Only.
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the lidar range can be blocked by cars in front and rear)……
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You might want to ask —- Why Is That ? .
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.Let us look at the facts Fords First ” the first-generation autonomous vehicle from Ford – a LiDAR-equipped F-250 Super Duty. ” is 10 years old. 10 years and only now they are initiating testing in snow ?
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JAN 11, 2016 | DETROIT
FORD CONDUCTS INDUSTRY-FIRST SNOW TESTS OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES — FURTHER ACCELERATING DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2016/01/11/ford-conducts-industry-first-snow-tests-of-autonomous-vehicles.html
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. Not that they tested and failed – ” The Industry ” Did Not Even Try .
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Currently there is no possible manner to drive in heavy snow
and even heavy rain negatively and dangerously impacts the Lidar.
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.Yes technology can change but right now there is none available.
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.. Ford it trying it but it takes extraordinary effort to identify all objects that may not
be covered with snow, that type of mapping will be extraordinary ( and expensive)
and things change over time.
Now I have also for years followed truck manufacturing,
They – if in fact they desire to put these on the road in any numbers ( sales).
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Generally will test perhaps 200 ( sometimes as many as 600 ) vehicles for 2 or more years ( it will likely be 5 or greater in my opinion) before any regular customer sales occur.
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.Fleet testing is an important phase of vehicle research that provides proof of performance under actual operating conditions.
You may want to read about Fleet Testing.
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.Remember, it is not just snow and bumper to bumper traffic
they cannot drive in heavy rain and won’t even admit the depth of snow.
millimeter = one thousandth of a meter (0.039 in.).
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“””” McBride said Ford’s cars have driven through several millimeters of rain on the road. He wouldn’t say what depth of snow the cars have successfully navigated. “””
Imagine what happens if they had an inch of rain. They have only successfully driven
in millimeters.
millimeter = one thousandth of a meter (0.039 in.).
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You are welcome.
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Mish, you moved your forecast sooner but the article stated that
“That objective probably won’t be reached for decades, despite the progress made with automated passenger vehicles over the past five years, predicts Steven Shladover, program manager for mobility at the University of California’s Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology. ”
You are still to optomistic. Much like the flying car, just a few years away!!
Check out Vooch’s comment below.
He has a well-thought out time line – more optimistic than mine
It’s possible he is not optimistic enough
In contrast, it’s pretty obvious that anyone who says this is decades away is not only a pessimist, but a complete fool.
Mish
mish,
note – Generally I am a grumpy old guy that doesn’t believe any of this new fangeled junk is worth a plug nickel.
However, the economics of SD vehicles is so compelling, early adoptetion will happen quickly.
How quickly will big Agra adopt SD tractors ? Big Mining SD trucks ?
How quickly will UPS, FedEx, Wal Mart, Home Depot, Krogers adopt SD trucks going from a dedicated route such as Regional Warehouse to a Regional Warehouse ?
How quickly will Auto Parts Suppliers adopt SD trucks going on a dedicated route from loading dock to loading dock ?
Everyone should parse the interview very carefully , these guys are hard nosed engineers who have a concrete realistic plan.
Absolutely agree with you
Technology is outpacing the bureaucrats
Mish
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I have followed car and truck manufacturing for years. And train too.
Hybrid train.
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For example I followed ( almost daily for 5 years ) Start Stop Technology
battery hybrids for cars and trucks.
– the car or truck would shut off at a light, or stop sign, or bumper to bumper traffic
wherein the battery runs the necessities,
and the car would start when foot off break and accelerator pushed.
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5 years I listened how Every car would have this, how Government would demand it
reduces gas use and also emissions.
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. Fed Ex will demand it UPS it is a must, every trucker will save 10,000’s of dollars a year
on fuel, Hybrid trucking and even trains, are the Must Have and will be here in 2 years.
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And where is it ? Where is Stop Start the best required government demanded
hybrid vehicles reducing emissions ( a very big player in the trucking and train
industry ( see Norfolk Southern and others re the trains ).
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It is no where. Because no one wants it.
Because we want to start our cars in the winter and run them to warm up.
Because we want to run our cars in the Summer with the AC and batteries
can’t take it.
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. Because the technology ( highly reliant on batteries ) never caught up
for the past 10 years promised .
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Example Norfolk Southern was to begin sales of their Odysey Battery Train
in 2009 and the entire thing fell apart…….
.http://www.odysseybattery.com/documents/NorfolkSouthern_1009.pdf
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. Right now the autonomous vehicle cannot run in rain or in snow
and has issues in bumper to bumper traffic. They do not have the
technology yet to run it in snow. It may require extraordinary work
and will likely require Government subsidy to put sign posts up every
yard or two or something ridiculous like that – that is what it seems to require now.
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Amazing innovation!
But now there will not be any friendly truckers to stop and help you when your car breaks down on the Interstate in the middle of no where.
I believe you get on you cell phone and make a call.
Mish
There is going to be a lot of “unemployed” sex workers, dope dealers, serial killers…etc. What to do what to do. Maybe a government bail out.
Why don’t we already have self-driving trains on all the freight lines? I would think the challenges with automating trains would be simpler than for trucks.
The train industry is a lot of monopolies. Train companies own their own lines and have no competition so they can charge what they want. It is also a heavily unionized industry. Put the two together and engineer-less trains aren’t coming soon.
Though GE has written some great software that could easily get them there.
If we can’t figure out how to overcome the unions and regulatory hurdles for automating freight trains I don’t see how we will get around those problems with trucks. The number of parties with vested interests that can block progress on the roads are far more numerous than their are for the train industry.
The only problem I see with Mish’s estimates is that union-controlled states like Illinois, California, Michigan, etc. will do everything they can to protect the jobs. Corrupt officials in these states get more money from unions than they do from trucking companies. It’ll be a slow withering away of jobs, and I’m not just talking about driving jobs – shippers and receivers would relocate to be closer to driverless hubs which is a lot more jobs than trucking. I’d like to believe technology can advance faster than bureaucrats can retard it, but I have my doubts.
I expect Illinois to do one of three incredibly stupid things:
1) ban driverless hubs
2) tax the bejeezus out of them
3) subsidize driverless hubs to the point where taxpayers get screwed
And so the driverless truck revolution will bypass Illinois, further cementing its status as the Somalia/Zimbabwe/Venezuela of America.
I doubt most truckers are teamsters anymore. Could be wrong though.
My employer, Daimler Trucks North America, the market leader in heavy truck manufacturing, was granted the first autonomous license in Nevada. We did a huge marketing event about a year ago at the Hoover Dam, which included projecting a humongous video onto the dam itself while the driverless truck drove across. Look it up. It’s probably on Youtube. There are several standardized levels of autonomy, the least of which will be here very soon, but totally driverless will take much longer. The sensors require good quality road striping. If it’s covered or poor quality it won’t be able to find its way safely enough. Platooning a convoy is coming quickly though.
Man, the innovation! Driverless cars and trucks, what next, mindless facebook users? Oh wait, we already have those.
Paradoxically, it seems the only thing Mish is optimistic about is something that allows him to be pessimistic. But unfortunately once again focusing on the negative instead of the hundreds of billions of dollars of capital investment needed to retrofit all those trucks and taxis and the hug boost to international productivity.
It will be interesting to see the real increase in productivity. You can have the trucks on the road for 24 hours, but most businesses aren’t open 24 hours to take in the loads. So the productivity increase will most likely be the cost of the driver minus the cost of the software, hardware and services needed to replace said driver.
If the fully loaded cost of a driver is say $40K (making this up), and I need an ROI of say 4 years max, that only gives me $160K/truck over 4 years to play with. Say $80K for the system and $20K/year in maintenance and support. Not a windfall.
Paradoxically, it seems the only thing Mish is optimistic about is something that allows him to be pessimistic. But unfortunately once again focusing on the negative instead of the hundreds of billions of dollars of capital investment needed to retrofit all those trucks and taxis and the hug boost to international productivity.
Might I point out my long stated belief that many dispute ….
1. Technology makes things better
2. Technology has always created jobs over the long haul
Rather optimistic compared with most of the Luddites here
I don’t disagree with your assessment on the possible and eventual vision which you have on this subject Mr. Mish. I been involved in the transportation industry since 1998 and I’ve experienced firsthand how competitive and cutthroat this industry can be. I don’t question the technology, I question the industry as a whole with its ability to actually implement it in an efficient way. One of the highest cost in the industry is maintaince and I’ve seen the way they cut corners and believe me they do. It will be no different with autonomous vehicles. Almost all the largest common carriers and even a lot of small fleet owners would prefer they didn’t even own the vehicle but just provided logistics support to lease operators mainly do to maintaince cost. What you referenced in this article about hub to hub and a last mile driver, already exist. It’s called rail and it still is the most cost effective way to move non time sensitive freight from coast to coast. I don’t fault your excitement when it comes to this matter, but I don’t know if you realize or even care but this industry is not the first choice for many, for most it’s the last path to a dwindling middle class lifestyle. One more thing we here in the US are spoiled, we have one of the best supply chains in the world, every time you go to the grocery store is proof enough.
As big a killer as driverless vehicles will be is battery powered vehicles. No more engines and drive trains will decimate the vehicle maintenance industry.
No more calls at work from my wife dropping off her car at Pep-Boys for the $15 dollar oil and filter change and having them let her know that she desperately needs the $80 “gas treatment” to clean out the fuel injectors.
Mish,
my Early Adoption prediction for SD vehicles
2017 – off Road , Mining, framing, logging
2018 – Long Haul Trucks Interstate only, last mile by Human
2019 – For Hire Vehicles along specific routes
2020 – Long Haul Trucks from specific Warehouse to specific Warehouse loading dock
2021 – My 82 Mom buys a new SD car to go to CostCo twice a month and visit her Cousin once a month
2022 – FHV widespread
2023 -Long Haul Trucks point to point Outside cities
The US fleet Turns Over Every 10 years. We can Expect 10-25% of the new fleet from 2020 -2025 to be SD. That means 10 to 30 Million SD vehicles by 2025.
How does “Otto” change the fleet turnover stats?
Thanks
Mish
The only turnover Otto needs to be concerned with is the capital that Otto’s investor’s will be turning over to it’s operations staff and it’s bodacious cash burn rate, not to mention the outrageous insurance premiums that await Otto clients.
Otto is self funded
Extremely wealthy ex-Google employees
As for insurance rates – They will drop
Accident rates 100% guaranteed to be less
Mining already uses SD vehicles. This is from 3 years ago:
http://www.mining.com/australias-big-miners-add-more-driverless-trucks-88704/
One other point, if a truck goes from being utilized 11 hours a day on each trip to 24 hours your fleet turnover time will be cut by more than half. Add in “Otto” technology and the long haul fleet will be turning over in under 5 years. (Another bonus of the change to SD vehicles is new technologies for fuel efficiency and safety will permeate the national fleet much faster than at present.)
Mish, regarding hub to hub trucking with a local driver doing the final mile, that is how most of the industry is set up today. (Cheap land and less traffic congestion.) Outside of deliveries to retail stores most large truck deliveries are to commercial and industrial zones on the outsides of cities.
Next let’s move to NASCAR. No more egotistic suicidal maniacs driving the lefties!!!!
How do they handle snow?
If they’re equally happy traveling at night vs day, can we ban them from operating on highways through cities during rush hours?
How does it refuel? And what about pirates on the open road climb aboard rob the goods as its moving? Somebody will try this at some point!
How does it refuel? And what about pirates on the open road climb aboard rob the goods as its moving? Somebody will try this at some point!
It refuels at trucking stations.
No one is going to try hijacking a moving truck on the open road. Please be serious.
What the hell would they do with it? Police would be notified by software immediately.
I need a TA robot to do these replies.
Or is Mish really a TA robot?
“No one is going to try hijacking a moving truck on the open road.”
I’ve seen all the Mad Max movies, it’s difficult but possible.
Underestimated by commenters above: Otto is a **retrofit** – it takes an existing truck and converts it to selfdriving where and when conditions permit – It can **also** be driven by a driver at any place and time a regular truck can run.
The potential for self driving while the driver rests in the bunk is huge! Even a non perfect deployment, gaining only a few hours of interstate driving per day would pay. Lost hauling hours due to the limits put on the driver is a major cost for trucking – from the owner/operator rigs to the big unionized shops. I don’t see unionized drivers baulking at getting paid substantially the same for a trip that takes them from home for less time, allowing either more trips or more home life. This will not be a lose situation for most of the drivers, at least those that can adapt. Unions are pretty good at cutting off the lowest seniority people if the remaining ones benefit.
Much of long haul trucking is not just driving – people seriously underestimate the complexity of load scheduling, delivery windows, and little details like tanker clean-outs, weight limits and borders. Anything that provides a bit more flexibility in scheduling driver hours will be adopted as fast as regulations will permit.
Owner operators may be early adopters. One man could herd a dozen robots.
Wal-Mart drivers will be on the cutting edge of job losses followed by Swift and on down the trucking food chain.
Mish, if 95% of your readers disagree, maybe that’s a sign that you should listen instead of ridiculing them.
Another clue is that only the ones selling it agree with you.
This is BY FAR the stupidest comment ever posted in the history of the internet. Congratulations!
Not true.
Aside from your completely moronic lack of logic (a prevalence of Luddites means they are right), your “facts” are wrong. Most of Mish’s reader agree with him. If it’s not evident in this one blog post comment section, it’s because those who agree have amply proved their point time and again and don’t feel compelled to waste time to keep explaining it to people like you. And I’m willing to venture that none of us are making a dime off this tech … yet.
No way to even play it directly except to get a job offer at “Otto”. Indirectly, I like lithium which is used in batteries. There are a number of lithium plays. Many are small and illiquid which is why I haven’t talked about them. Perhaps I should do a post on this.
The Port of Long Beach trucker strike last fall opened the door to short haul robots. Ten percent of Long Beach cargo is expected to divert to Post Panamax East coast harbors. Jacksonville, Miami, Charleston, Savannah have less mafia/union friction than Long Beach, New York, and New Jersey. Robot short haul closed circuit truckers could improve efficiency and reliability of the ports enough to divert more than ten percent. Longshoremen and truckers are going the way of the buffalo hunters. Some blood may be shed, but I have confidence in Southern justice. The first port to eliminate the mob gets the business.
Yes, and I’m equally confident that someday the stock market will crash.
The real question, indeed the ONLY QUESTION is when. When will this occur in the ports? Will it happen before we have unmanned trains criss crossing flyover country?
Two problems .
The first is the amount of time the public takes to trust riding in a driverless vehicle , many might refuse .
The second is liability and risk . I don’t think that the public will willingly accept a vehicle sharing the road where the person who placed it there is not directly involved in the result of an error . That is to say , no matter the safety record and insurance carried , you are removing an important layer of incentive in the driving of a vehicle , that of immediate physical harm.
You will be able to come up with a myriad of valid arguments to this , but not one of them will count at the level I am describing .
This is not about the public.
This is about truck shipments – for now.
That’s why the time line for the public is longer
NXP agrees with your timeline -> http://www.recode.net/2016/5/16/11635628/self-driving-autonomous-cars-timeline?cid=social61660526&adbid=10154291212896414&adbpl=fb&adbpr=172907906413
They also think manual driving will start to be restricted around 2030, and in 2045 to 2050 all vehicle will be autonomous.
They need to distinguish between truck and cars and taxis and busses
Robots are coming. Inflation speeds up the process, by making workers unaffordable. Just as inflation sped up the movement of jobs to other countries. Workers can’t compete, when they have to pay fantastic rent inflation, or medical inflation. To put this another way, workers can’t compete when bankers confiscate part of their pay, forcing them to ask for raises.
Mish,
If, as you say a large number of trucks are driven by (small) owners, while they may stop driving long distance, that does not translate into “they will lose their jobs”. By “jobs”, I mean their source of livelihood. They could still earn a living as follows …
I suspect that life will probably become easier for these owner-drivers. While earlier they might have had to drive from door-to-door, in future they would only have to drive from door-to-hub & the rest of the journey would be driverless. On the other end an affiliate driver could complete the last mile from hub to door and vice versa.
In other words driver owners will become local and long distance would be driverless. The real problem would be for employee drivers whose business could decline.
long haul jobs will vanish
There will be an overabundance of short-haul drivers
Mish
I really doubt we will see huge developments in driverless haulage. They are too open to sabotage and too reliant on non reliable data networks. It will only take a few bad accidents (possibly caused on purpose by rogue union outlaws) to bring in a whole slew of local and regional legislation that will tie up this type of development for decades. Its a neat idea but hugely vulnerable
People like Mish are the reason people are voting for Trump. Only the elites are in favor of mass automation with the resulting loss of millions of jobs. Does he actually think all the unemployed working class people who have left the labor force are suddenly going to become bloggers? It’s ludicrous.
Work for less than the cost of a robot. Be as dependable as a robot. Cost less for medical insurance than for robot repairs. Repeal the social security tax. Dress like a robot instead of a ghetto rat. Be versatile and work several union trades. Better humans have a future, but not others.
What you say may be true Billy, but what good is voting for Trump going to do anyone except Trump? Robotization is coming no matter who the puppet is.
Hi there Mish, you are very likely correct.
NVIDIA presented months ago the DRive PX 2, a briefcase size supercomputer consuming just 250 W:
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-gpu-drive-px-2/
A great deal of the scepticism will go away when the Roborace series gets on the road next November.
Mish, I thought you’d be interested in the farming side of robotics. This will greatly increase productivity and reduce teh need for foreign workers once they get all the bugs worked out. Robotics are the future virtually everywhere.
https://www.facebook.com/newscientist/videos/vb.235877164588/10154258535599589/?type=2&theater