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Einride, a company based in Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden, has a vision that lowers these hurdles slowing the adoption of both alternative energy and self-driving technologies in hauling. The key change? Take the driver out of the vehicle with a hybrid of self-driving and remote control.
Einride plans to have their driverless (windowless, even) T-pods plying the route between Gothenburg and Helsingborg by 2020. The 7-meter (23- feet) long vehicle can carry 15 standard pallets and up to 20 tons. The trucks roll through their highway distances in fully automated mode. But when they near population centers, the T-pods can be put under remote control, with a human managing the navigation.
With no paid personnel on board to be bored and useless during long charging cycles, electric motors begin to make more sense. The T-pods can travel 200 km (124 miles) on a single charge, and stops at charging stations add little to the overall costs of haulage compared to traditional rigs that have down-time during driver resting periods. Remote drivers can simply switch their attention to a different vehicle when one T-pod stops for recharging. Which is a good thing, because even the run up and down the Swedish coastline between Gothenburg and Helsingborg may be a bit out of range without a top-up along the way.
Maybe all those hours playing Starcraft did not go to waste after all--perfect training to be an Einride operator.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 19 2017, @06:27AM
This should be just part of a larger overall vision: transport optimized to the freight, rather than to the vehicle. Making sensible use of driver hours. Where I am (Switzerland), we have a lot of trucks that drive onto the train, so that they can take the tunnel through the Alps. Which means that the drivers are just along for the ride - but if you propose eliminating drivers from the trip (you know, another driver could pick up the truck on the other end) - well, you'd have thought you proposed dismemberment or something. No, somehow it's better to pay them to have nothing to do, because we've always done it that way. So, yes, RPVs make a lot of sense, especially with automation for the highway portion of the journey. This breaks the tie between an individual driver and an individual truck - currently, trucks spend most of their time idle, because drivers are only allowed to work a maximum of 9 hours per day. [europa.eu]
To the larger vision: actually, the trucks themselves are irrelevant. In the Swiss case, WTF are we transporting the trucks back and forth under the alps, when it's only the cargo that needs to go? Standardized cargo containers exist - that's what you see being loaded and unloaded from ships. Why are these containers not used for the rest of the transport chain?
Getting back to TFA, this would mean having this automated/remotely-piloted vehicle equipped to take a standard transport container. For the cases where the standard containers are too large, we need a smaller standard container that holds maybe 3-4 palettes. Then move these containers from place to place on the available transport - ship, truck, train or plane.
The current systems is just crazily inefficient. My wife's company imports stuff internationally. A shipment is loaded on a truck, palette by palette. It goes to a logistics center, where the palettes are unloaded. They are then reloaded onto an international truck. Which arrives in a logistics center, and is unloaded, palette by palette. Then reloaded on a local truck which drives to our place and unloads. So the individual palettes are loaded and unloaded six different times. It is entirely normal to find that a forklift has stuck its fork into a palette somewhere along the way. Theft is also problem, because anyone in any warehouse along the way can slit open the shrink wrap and help themselves. It would be infinitely better to containerize the shipment, seal the container, and ship the whole thing as a unit.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.