Automated technologies across the automotive industry are starting to come of age, according to a new report from ID TechEx. Automated trucks especially are showing real promise. The report notes that the stage has been set with last year's 80-mile journey across Arizona, done by TuSimple's autonomous truck that had zero human intervention.
Here is further analysis from the report on this sector:
The first deployments will likely be between distribution hubs separated by vast stretches of interstate. This eliminates lots of the more challenging scenarios for autonomous vehicles, such as pedestrians, stop signs, un-protected left turns, turning right on red lights, and other situations which rely on human judgment. Finally, autonomous trucks can bring a significant increase in productivity. Many of the journeys across the US take several days for humans to complete due to daily driving time limits. Autonomous vehicles will not be subject to this and have the potential to half the delivery time for journeys over a certain distance. There is a need to increase fleet capacity, which driverless trucks could do. The operational design domain is within reach of what autonomous technologies can achieve, and there is the prospect of significant productivity uplift per truck with autonomy. It looks like the stars are aligning for autonomous trucks, and IDTechEx is expecting to see announcements of the first commercial ‘driver-out’ routes coming online in the next one to two years.
In 2023, ID TechEx predicts that Commercial ‘driver-out’ autonomous trucking will enter a trialing phase: and that in 2023 the first commercial autonomous truck routes without a driver behind the wheel will go online. This will likely start with a single route, perhaps Tucson to Phoenix, as demonstrated by TuSimple. However, they said they feel a handful of routes and companies will be online by the end of next year.
