The world, and in particular the UK, Europe and the US are experiencing a serious shortage of truck drivers. Although there are several reasons for this, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the resultant e-commerce boom and increase in deliveries, are major contributing factors. In the UK, Brexit and the loss of many (east) European truck drivers, have exacerbated the problem and created severe interruptions of supply chains.
One possible solution to this problem would be to follow the example of many industries, such as manufacturing and agriculture, by automating. Several companies, such as Plus, Embark, the Google spin-off, Waymo, and the Uber-backed Aurora, have thus invested in the development of autonomous trucks and are competing to be the first to deliver a commercial product. Among them is the company TuSimple from San Diego in the US. They are currently developing some of the most advanced self-driving technologies for heavy-duty trucks.chi
TuSimple is a fairly young company and was only founded in 2015, but they have already completed about 3.2 million kilometres of road tests with 70 prototype trucks across the US, China and Europe. The prototype automated trucks are currently merely commercial trucks that were retrofitted with advanced automation technology. However, TuSimple has already made deals with Navistar in the US and Traton (Volkswagen’s trucking business) in Europe – two of the largest truck manufacturers in the world – to build fully autonomous trucks, which it hopes to launch by 2024.
Unlike self-driving cars that need to operate in busy city traffic and, therefore, are still a long way from commercial availability, the TuSimple trucks will only operate on the highways that have been thoroughly mapped via the company’s own software. Accurate data of the roads is of course essential and TuSimple has gone to great lengths to collect all important data from the roads in order to create a highly detailed and high definition map of each route.
The trucks will only self-drive along these pre-defined and pre-mapped roads, which thus add another layer of safety to the vehicles. Cheng Lu, the president and chief executive of TuSimple colloquially refers to these pre-mapped routes, or the TuSimple Autonomous Freight Network (AFN), as “virtual railroads”.
In most countries the bulk of goods travel through certain trade corridors, which are often linked to harbours, airports and border posts to neighbouring countries. It has been calculated that in the US about 80 percent of goods travel through 10 percent of the country’s corridors, which makes the mapping and operation much simpler and easier.
One of the major benefits of automated trucks is that they render a much faster point-to-point service. While delivering fresh produce over a distance of 1 500km the journey time was reduced from the usual 24 hours with a human driver to only 14 hours. The main reason for the reduction in delivery time is that unlike a human driver, the truck does not need to take a break or to sleep. Neither is it bound by the maximum driving hours per day as regulated by the authorities.
When trucks are commercialised and driving totally autonomously, this time will be even be reduced further since during testing in the United States they had to stop for a fresh driver every 11 hours. Fully autonomous trucks have the ability to operate continuously, stopping only for refuelling and preventative maintenance. This leads to a significant increase in uptime, thus enabling more and faster shipment of food and supplies.
Although the pick-up and drop-off were still handled by a human driver, the rest of the trip was done by the automated truck itself without the driver touching the wheel.
No doubt, the advanced automation technology will add about R760 000 to the cost of a truck, but the saving on the salaries of drivers would offset the additional cost in a relative short time. In the US the additional technology cost entails an extra 48c per kilometre over the average lifespan of the truck.
With the current salaries of truck drivers in the US between R1.2 million and R1.8m per year, it amounts to between R7.59 and R11.38 per kilometre or roughly 50 percent of the operating costs of a truck. TuSimple’s autonomous trucks reduce labour costs, improve fuel efficiency by 10 percent, and due to fewer accidents attract lower insurance premiums. This results in much lower operating costs, which eventually benefits shippers, carriers and fleets. The pricing of autonomous trucks are also more stable than trucks with human drivers.
Another benefit, according to TuSimple’s observations, is that automated trucks react 15 times faster than human drivers and can see much farther down the road, even at night. Since most fatalities involving trucks can be attributed to human error, the probability for accidents are significantly smaller. Automated trucks do not get tired, do not text on their phone while driving, or watch a movie, or get distracted and is known for reliability up to 99 percent.
TuSimple’s perception technology allows the autonomous trucking system to see 360 degrees around the entire vehicle and up to 1 000 metres away, which when travelling at highway speeds, translates into the ability to see 30 seconds ahead. This allows the system to effectively avoid danger. The self-driving technology platform utilises LiDAR, radar and most importantly HD Cameras and sensors to provide all-round awareness, making the navigation of nearly any driving condition, day or night, rain or sunshine, possible.
The autonomous trucking system powered by artificial Intelligence technology is powerful and is capable of 600 trillion operations per second, allowing the system to identify problems and situations and then plan the best course of action. It is also much better in lane centring and accelerating and braking (impacting brake wear and fuel efficiency) than human drivers.
Since TuSimple wants to focus on the routes between distribution centres and terminals, which involve long distances of tedious driving, they do not foresee that the automated trucks would create joblessness amongst drivers. Drivers will still be necessary for the pick-up and delivery of the goods, while TuSimple will focus on the “middle mile” according to Lu. Automation is currently not meant for numerous stops for delivery in busy cities. Human drivers will still work a full day, but will not have to spend numerous nights from home.
TuSimple is planning to do their first fully autonomous tests without a human safety driver before the end of the year. Success is important since the company already has seven thousand reservations in the US alone. Although there are several competitors in the market, it seems that TuSimple has a competitive advantage due to the fact that their technology is purpose-built for trucking, while many of the other companies are working on a wider range of autonomous vehicles. The skills, and therefore the system to drive a passenger vehicle, are vastly different from driving a large truck.
TuSimple has definitely succeeded in creating an autonomous truck with a technologically advanced driving system, high standards of safety, and increased driving efficiency, while reducing both operational costs and the carbon footprint of the trucks. They are creating a new business model – freight capacity as a service to both shippers and carriers – that may change the trucking industry. The business model offers shippers autonomous capacity on a per kilometre delivery rate. Carriers can purchase autonomous trucks and operate them on the TuSimple Autonomous Freight Network, and only tap into TuSimple’s autonomous capacity when needed.
Would we see automated trucks in South Africa? Certainly not soon, since self-driving passenger vehicle tests by Mercedes-Benz found that South Africans do not always follow rules, which would make it difficult for an automated truck that uses logic and fixed rules to make decisions. Furthermore, roads, road-markings and road-signs all need to be in a good condition to make navigation easier, which is unfortunately not always the case in South Africa. But we will get there – one day. It seems that currently we are more concerned about foreign truck drivers than automated trucks.
Professor Louis CH Fourie is an Extraordinary Professor University of the Western Cape.
*The views expressed here are not necessarily those of IOL or of title sites.
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