The article claims about 3 million truck tractors on US roads, and puts the cost of each driver at about $65k/year.
Am I correct in naively calculating something like $200B/year on the table for full-self-driving truck technology?
Am I correct in naively calculating something like $200B/year on the table for full-self-driving truck technology?
Sure I guess there are operating models where you don't need one driver paired all the time with one truck but definitely can't just replace drivers IMHO
There's no reason, but then it also proportionally reduces the cap of $65k to some lower amount, that doesn't include those extra responsibilities.
Also, some of the easy use cases for potential self-driving tech have - at least in the US - already been put on rail which is in a sense almost a self-driving truck. In my view one of the major opportunities missing for making trucking more cost competitive and reducing the societal impact of trucking (emissions, road wear, less than desirable work conditions for truck drivers) is to move more and more freight onto rail. The US is quite good at it actually, but in particular Europe needs to get their act together on it.
Might need to add the capex of equipment costs, and subtract the externalities costs of increases wear and tear on infrastructure and equipment.