Eyal Cohen surveys the current commercial state of autonomous trucking a decade after initial industry efforts.
Insight
Cohen: Highway stops for confused autonomous trucks are highly dangerous
“When, in San Francisco, when a passenger car stops, you know, people go around and they honk, they call they call annoyed their local politicians, whatever, but mostly it's a safe situation. You don't have that advantage on a highway. So, so, so stopping a tru…”
Disclosure
Humble Robotics adopts a camera-first architecture for autonomous trucks
“Today, for me, at Humble, we flip that, and we do a lot more on vision algorithms. We're camera first, and that's because of just the evolution of this technology.”
Opinion
Cohen: Level 4 autonomous trucks currently require cameras, LiDAR, and radar
“From my perspective, for a vehicle, a truck, for example, you put on the road, you would want it to have camera, lidar, and radar to do a level four being, you know, driverless, to do a level four truck today.”
Insight
Cohen: Hub-to-hub autonomous freight faces economic hurdles from depot friction
“The challenge in that is, today, you don't have those depots, and somebody has to build those depots, and those depots are friction. Like, who is moving the freight to that depot And why do they want to move into that depot, as opposed to just what they do tod…”
Insight
Cohen: Autonomous freight requires electric drivetrains to enable automated refueling
“If you were going to have fully hands-off freight, you would want it to be electric to charge, to handle the charging in an automated way. It's really hard to do that with diesel.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cohen: Early autonomous trucking rollouts will concentrate on specific segments in Texas
“I don't think you'll see generalized solutions where there's just like autonomous trucks zigzagging like everywhere for a while, but
I think what you'll see is some specific segments, mostly in Texas, where you'll see occasional autonomous trucks and some sc…”