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But these days, trucks seem to be a more attractive bet. American Trucking Association Says Shippers Paid $ 791 Billion to Truck Freight in 2019; in contrast, Aurora estimates the annual market for ride-sharing vehicles at $ 35 billion. Tech developers believe that if they reduce shipping costs, they can keep some of the savings. “There is clearly a need for robotaxis in dense cities, but outside of dense cities, where everyone has their own car, you have to create a demand,” says Asad Hussain, who analyzes mobility companies at PitchBook.
Autonomous truck makers say their technology will save shippers money. Embark says its autonomous driving technology, which it hopes to sell to fleet operators as a subscription, will save 80 cents per mile, cutting costs in half compared to human-driven trucks. Robots, after all, don’t need to be paid and don’t need breaks. They will not resign, sparing the labor shortages for carriers. And robots don’t have a union. Human drivers could continue to take care of short-haul trucking jobs, companies say, a more localized job that will allow them to spend more time at home rather than on the road.
The Plus company, which is testing autonomous trucks in China and the United States, says its first trucks will help human drivers do their jobs more safely and will collect data as they go. Eventually, around 2024, the company hopes to use this data when it removes the human from the car. The process “will take some time,” says founder and CEO David Liu.
The union is skeptical. “To embrace technology as a sort of panacea for the problems plaguing the industry is to miss the mark,” said Sam Loesche, senior legislative and policy representative of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Some of the recent investor enthusiasm reflects the new importance of logistics amid pandemic disruptions, including congestion at ports and driver shortages that have resulted in shipping delays. “It’s the Amazon effect, where everyone got comfortable delivering everything with one click,” says Jim Scheinman, managing partner of venture capital firm Maven Ventures, which invested in Embark .
The investor frenzy follows a series of spirited partnerships between technology developers and traditional truckers and shippers. Embark works with reputable shippers like HP and ABInBev, and with carriers like Werner Enterprises and Knight-Swift Transportation. TuSimple leads pilots with UPS and works on a bespoke vehicle with truck maker Navistar. Aurora works with truck manufacturers at Paccar and Volvo. All of this seems to have convinced people of the money that self-driving trucks are the real deal.
And yet, there is still no real driverless truck, and there may never be. Autonomous trucks present a tantalizing safety opportunity – truck driving is one of the deadliest jobs in the United States, according to the Department of Labor – but an 80,000 pound missile traveling at 70 mph can cause a lot of damage. damage. Because autonomous trucks are so heavy and go faster than cars on city streets, they need to be able to see farther down the road, which is no small technical matter. So far, the companies have held limited demonstrations and pilots of their technology, but all have had safety drivers in the cab.
Unlike self-driving car companies, which have missed many self-imposed deadlines, trucking companies have yet to have that much time to fail. “Maybe when the timelines are stretched or there are crashes, investors will say, ‘Oh, how come it’s not delivered? Why are you not on the right track? ‘ Says Bruno Bowden, an engineer who worked for Aurora and is now an angel investor. (He has a stake in Aurora.) The technology is getting more and more scholarly – someday, so might investors.
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