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I think it's a false-dilemma to assume it needs to be total automation or nothing at all.

What about "trains" of trucks, where the first truck is piloted and the rest follow? That'd be significantly easier to engineer, and there'd be a person on-site for miscellaneous needs like gassing them up.

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One of the major advantages of trucks over trains is precisely that - they're not trains. Making them trains would take away all the flexibility they currently have. If you're taking coal from the mine to the power station then you're probably already using a train. Anything less predictable needs individual trucks.

"Trucks aren't trains" is a tautology.

First, having 2-5 trucks in an automatic convoy is still ENORMOUSLY different than a multi-locomotive train with 10+ or even 100+ wagons on fixed rails.

Second, even if you equalized their "sizes", a three-truck convoy is NOT magically equivalent to a three-wagon train, because they are running on fundamentally different infrastructures.

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