And an arbitrary one, in my opinion. We will be racking up millions of driven miles by hundreds of autonomous trucks before that bar is reached. We will have drivers in the trucks. We will have connections to remote operators.
The article calls out the challenge of stopping distance and sensing range. Drive Hwy80 over the Sierra Nevada mountains in winter, stopping, predictability, many other factors come up as well.
Yes, some routes are dangerous, but the trucks don't need to take those initially. There's a lot of scope for a phased ramp up.
A lot of I80 is really straight, same with other highways. I70 from Denver to St. Louis is incredibly boring all the way through Kansas. I90 from Wisconsin through Minnesota and South Dakota is the same. Just dead straight easy roads. Down south I10 was pretty easy too.
Just because there are a few tough stretches, that doesn't mean the auto-pilot can't drive the other thousand miles on the route, with human support where necessary.
Pick the MVP routes that are easiest. I95 is trivial from Florida, all the way up to DC. Then it remains mostly easy with some really annoying bits around DC, Philly, and NYC. I wouldn't want it trying to get through the traffic over the GW and through the Bronx, but after that it's mostly smooth all the way through Maine.
For the East / West routes between California and Nevada / Utah / etc. I80 is that corridor. I5 would be an interesting one in CA, but you have the grapevine in the south and Siskiyous in the North (again, Siskiyous not fun in weather).
I know that “just put it on a freight train” doesn’t solve every logistics problem but it does kind of address this one. Maybe their solution should be focused on improving transloading between truck and train and using autonomous trucking to solve the “last mile(s)” problem for trains.
Oh I think the major rail lines should be used for long haul cargo traffic Salt Lake -> Reno -> Sacramento -> Bay Area would be one example an keep it off mountain roads.
The US have a well-developed and really busy network of freight trains. Trains already carry a lot of stuff that's economical to carry by train, especially bulk goods.
And an arbitrary one, in my opinion. We will be racking up millions of driven miles by hundreds of autonomous trucks before that bar is reached. We will have drivers in the trucks. We will have connections to remote operators.