What Do You Think of Autonomous Trucks?

They have to be able to make cars before they can lose money on them.

Tesla is the modern day Tucker. People who don't know their automotive history and have only seen a movie, think that GM drove Tucker out of business. That was added to make an interesting movie. Tucker never had the capital to go up against any of the car makers. He was selling cars before the car was even built. He sold dealer rights to 2,000 dealers before ever making a car. He never made a single car.

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People espousing autonomous trucks taking over just leave out minute details. Like, weather, simple mechanical fixes it cannot perform, detours and construction (Tesla slamming into a barrier in Texas anyone?) axle weights, liability in city traffic negotiating tight turns that start in oncoming traffic, liability blocking traffic backing into a unmarked dock. Susceptible to glitches due to moisture, voltage instability, heat and cold. Susceptible to hacking which has already been demonstrated on a Jeep.

How about up front insurance cost while still employing drivers, and in Tesla's case, relying one one manufacturer for replacement parts (Volvo anyone?) and I won't go into a diatribe about Ryder servicing Tesla trucks, since I can list their shortcomings for a few paragraphs. How about 90 percent of companies being six trucks or less and can't afford to pay for the truck and a driver til it reaches autonomous level 3000? Is it really an advantage to be able to run 24/7 since I deliver one or two places out of 50 that are 24/7 operations?

I haven't seen any charging stations down here in any states I travel. Driving off road to make deliveries? Asking customers to move parked cars? Blocking half the road while on a dock since it was built in the 40 foot trailer days and not 53 foot? can it deliver product to one door, then move to another because the product is too wide and the guy on the forklift can't unload it on that one(happens in my day to day).

When you can answer the financial and liability questions, then address the engineering questions, then convince the public to purchase autonomous vehicles since it's still widely rejected in all recent studies, then autonomous utopia may stand a chance.

 

I ment that he was able to get people to preorder cars and buy into dealerships without having an actual car to show them. Even when the prototype was made,it couldn't backup because it didn't have a reverse gear. He had to show people that there was going to be a car so he has to build the prototype before he had a transmission built for it.

His car was famous for the headlight that turned with the car. He didn't invent that. The turning headlights were on cars 40 years before he built his. He took ideas from other car makes(most long out of business) and put them in one car.

 

one question, how do autonomous trucks fuel up and get DEF? What if they break down???

 

They'd be electric.

 

Is it just me or is the Tesla truck already late on its first delivery?

 

Already late.

 

I haven't waited this long for a video since porn and a 52k modem.