I wonder why we don't lower the ambitions: chain five trucks together, so that for long stretches of highway (hundreds of miles) one driver can drive the "train of trucks" while the other truck drivers sleep. The trucks could be really close together so no cars can come between them.
What problems am I overlooking that are not easily solvable?
Interesting, but does every unit have a driver? I was thinking, it could be interesting that they all have their drivers, because finally they won't all go to the same destination.
So it would be great that as a truck driver, you could attach yourself to one of these trains, sleep for a couple of hundred miles, put the alarm clock, wake up, then detach at the right time and go to your final individual destination. Maybe even take another "road train" for another couple of hundred miles...
There aren't any logistic piplines that make this favorable. If you actually wanted to do this you'd load it on intermodal freight cars and push it down rail to the destination.
People seem to think trucks go from one "transfer hub" to another. That hardly ever happens, and when it does, the trucker usually drops off one trailer and picks up a different one.
Most truck routes are actual deliveries or pickups. You go from the distribution center for a supplier and then you do a chain of stops at 4 or 5 stores where parts of the load are taken off the truck and the rest goes to the next stop. Or you pick up an empty and go to 2 or 3 locations to pick up finished product to either be delivered or brought to distribution.
I mean.. there's _thousands_ of hours of truckers on Youtube just doing their job and discussing it. You could watch any of those channels for a few hours and be _lightyears_ ahead of the typical "AV programmers" thinking on the subject.
It's kind of depressing really, how so many silicon valley type people never take the time to learn how the industry works.
Here's a place where automation and even EV would be _highly_ useful: "yard dogs."
Like I said, there's lots of "drop and hooks" in the industry, where your job is to leave a trailer behind somewhere and pick a new one up at that same place. That hub then needs a truck to go move the trailer from the spot, to the warehouse, then back again.
Trailers are numbered in a serialized fashion. Parking lots could be mapped with insane precision. Loading docks would need minimal upgrades. You could have a mostly automated warehouse freight yard logistics system. You generally have lots of power and only so many moves in a day so EV would be a big winner in any non-wintering lot, for a good reduction in diesel usage.
Okay.. now you can start thinking about tight integration between the trucks electronic communication system sending gps position updates to the warehouse enabling just in time trailer movements on the lot so a trucker might be able to breeze into and out of the lot in 5 minutes with everything waiting and queued up at the front gate for him. Now he doesn't need to navigate a strange lot at 5mph trying to find the right place to drop and the right trailer to grab, a good source of errors.
Now you can get into moving the EV automated yard dog off the lot and into the hands of larger customers like big box construction stores. A truck could be dropped off at a convenient place in the lot and a small mover could go grab it and maneuver it into the local dock. You could tighten up the spacing on those docks and put them in places a full tractor couldn't possibly pull them into. This also prevents the safety issue where the trucker can move the trailer before the business has finished with it, a good source of injuries.
Anyways.. silicon valley is focused completely on the wrong side and scale of the problems. There's so many "little things" where EV and automation could do wonders. Instead, everybody with a touching back story and a high valuation imagines themselves being able to become the next monopolistic transport baron at the cost of everyone else.
What problems am I overlooking that are not easily solvable?