How soon will autonomous driving take your job?

1. By mikolajwalczak
Here is to the truck drivers
willyoubereplaced.com/2020/02/14/here-is-to-the-truck-drivers/
There is a shortage of truck drivers!
You can hear it everywhere.
And it’s easy to be one in terms of getting a job. Once you have passed all the tests which
are in fact difficult, your life suddenly becomes easier. Even if you lose your job for
whatever reason usually you can find another one very quickly. That gives you a sense of
security.
But how long do you think this situation will last? Self driving cars or becoming a reality
whether you like it or not, and from cars to trucks it will not be very long.
You might say: yes but it’s not only driving – we have to deliver to odd places and then
uncouple the trailer ourselves using our hands. No robot will do it for you.
I would suggest that you might start from some special cases of yards where there are
no humans involved. You would have a specialised coupling mechanism that would be
fully automatic. There is a well tested example of an automated yard with driverless
vehicles – namely the Port of Rotterdam where machines unload and entire ship of
containers and self driving platforms (called AGVs – Automated Guided Vehicles) take
them out with no humans driving anything. The Port of Rotterdam has been doing it for
almost 30 years now!
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2. Automated Guided Vehicles – Port of Rotterdam – Wikipedia
Coupling could be also done by a separate person, a new role designated to do just that
and costing less, or shunters could take over this task once the vehicles come through
the gate. Shunters routinely couple and uncouple trailers and don’t normally go out on
public roads, that’s what their job is about.
You will then say: yeah but you would have to adapt the entire industry – all the trailers
and all the trucks would have to be changed and that will never happen. Too expensive!
Well, I say that will not happen in a single year but every single year new trucks and new
trailers are being produced – all the time.
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3. Myself – still driving
It’s not just a talk from an outside person
that comes here and tells you how the
world will or should look in the future. I
drive a truck myself on the roads of England
and I am sure I will not retire doing the
same job. I consider it impossible. Being 35
years old I just can’t believe that when I get
to the age of 65 or 67 there will still be a
need for truck drivers, maybe apart from
some highly specialised sectors, but overall
the numbers in employment will decrease
dramatically.
Elon Musk the founder of Tesla – a world
leader in electric vehicles which are said to
soon become self driven, compares driving
vehicles to operating lifts in the past. Once
lift operating became automated people never asked for the lift operators to come back
and do the job for them. It was far more secure and efficient to do it automatically
therefore now you don’t see any lifts with operators, apart from some luxurious places
which do it just to show off.
Musk also claims that every vehicle leaving the Tesla factory has the hardware capable of
self driving now. It is a matter of perfecting the software and then convincing lawmakers
to allow these vehicles to drive themselves on public roads.
Once they become safer than humans, which I believe has to happen sooner or later, the
public will demand that human driving shall be banned or restricted, like horse-riding is
restricted on some roads today. That would go both for trucks as well as for cars.
Tesla has a truck in production named Semi (what Americans call “semi trucks” is what
here in England is referred to as “articulated lorries” or “artics”). At present the Tesla
Semi does not compete economically with traditional trucking. The presence of the
operator adds to the expenses. Once it becomes driverless the cost calculation will
change.
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4. Tesla isn’t the only player here. Another example you can look at, if you still think you are
indispensable, is Swedish Einride. What they call a T-pod, is a self driving unit with no
space for a person as it is designed from the start for full autonomy. This makes it look
unusual but it has already started tests on public roads so the looks of it may become
more and more familiar soon. With a relatively small range of 200 km and taking up to
15 pallets it is planned to be sold as an integrated logistical system capable of efficient
work flow within its parameters.
Einride T-pod, Wikipedia
Pony AI is a Chinese company which now regularly runs self driving cars out on the roads
as their own free taxi service where you call the vehicle through a phone app and it
comes to pick you up. It is still being tested so only friends and family of the employees
have access to the service however this is a thing happening outside on the roads. A
driver is always there but does not touch anything.
China even builds designated lanes on the roads for self driving vehicles so it’s not
science-fiction talk anymore. It is a real thing considered by real policymakers.
Autonomous driving is happening, it’s a fact, not an opinion.
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5. Resources:
Pony AI
http://bit.ly/ponyai
Future of trucking
http://bit.ly/futureoftruckingg
Port of Rotterdam AGV
https://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/news-and-press-releases/celebration-of-20-years-
agv%E2%80%99s
Wikipedia AGV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle
China building self-driving lanes
https://www.futurecar.com/3114/China-Building-a-Highway-with-Dedicated-Lanes-for-
Autonomous-Vehicles
Tesla Semi
https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/semi
Einride
https://www.einride.tech/
Tesla chip
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6. http://bit.ly/teslachip
Tesla statement about the hardware
https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-
driving-hardware?redirect=no
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