[AutonomousVehicles] where are all the robot trucks?

[Cornelius Butler]

Hi Everyone,
The Verge just posted a new article about how 2024 could be a pivotal year
for self-driving vehicles. Article link and text are below.

Article Link:
https://www.theverge.com/23981006/autonomous-truck-semi-driverless-aurora-kodiak-infrastructure

Article Text:
Where are all the robot trucks?
The promised wave of autonomous big rigs never materialized. But 2024 could
prove to be a pivotal year for the technology.
By Chris Mills Rodrigo

Dec 4, 2023, 8:00 AM EST|7 Comments / 7 New

When legislation requiring heavy trucks to have a human operator onboard
sailed through the California legislature earlier this year, the coalition
of labor organizations backing it knew their victory wasn’t sealed quite
yet.

They were right. Weeks after the bill’s passage, Governor Gavin Newsom
vetoed it, arguing it would stifle innovation in the state. Teamsters and
their elected allies vowed to not back down in their campaign against fully
autonomous trucking.

The battle over the legislation, AB 316, may presage a broader fight over
self-driving trucks ahead of what is set to be a critical year for the
technology as it begins to be rolled out in earnest.

Despite claims of reducing accidents and assurances that autonomous
vehicles will not displace truckers, the prospect of sharing the road with
robotically controlled 18-wheelers continues to scare the public and alarm
labor groups.

Companies in the autonomous trucking space have been piloting the
technology for some time, moving long-haul freight for a wide range of
customers across the Southwest, with the most traveled routes being between
major metropolitan areas in Texas.

So far, these vehicles have been piloted by licensed operators ready to
step in if needed. But major companies say they are now ready to remove
that human presence and achieve what is known as Level 4 automation.

Where are the autonomous big rigs?
Plans to deploy driverless trucks come at a fraught time for the technology
and autonomous vehicles in general. Multiple firms focused on self-driving
trucks have recently pulled back operations or folded entirely, and a
high-profile robotaxi accident in San Francisco is sending shockwaves
across the industry.
Aurora Innovation, founded in 2017 by alumni of Uber, Tesla, and Waymo,
plans to deploy 20 fully autonomous trucks next year, with an eye on
expanding to about 100 trucks in 2025 and eventually selling to other
companies.

Kodiak Robotics, which boasts partnerships with Maersk, CR England, and
Ikea, is also planning to launch driverless trucks in 2024.

“The technology is finally at a point where driverless is here, and it’s
been a long time coming,” Kodiak’s co-founder and CEO, Don Burnette, who
has been working in the self-driving vehicle space for 15 years, told The
Verge. “We’ve really solved all of the fundamental technology hurdles that
we need to; now it’s just about proving the safety.”

Other companies have longer timeframes for their launches.

Torc Robotics, for example, has set a target of 2027 for the production of
the driverless trucks it has been developing in a partnership with the
manufacturing giant Daimler Truck.

While these three companies prepare for their launches, other once-major
players in autonomous trucking have recently cut back on or ended their
efforts to bring products to market.

The Alphabet subsidiary Waymo announced in July that it would be
prioritizing vehicles for ridehailing. TuSimple laid off half its American
workforce this summer and is said to be considering fully exiting the
market to focus on operations in China amid management turmoil. Embark
Technology laid off nearly a quarter of its staff in March before merging
with another autonomous vehicle firm.

These setbacks are reflective of an industry that has not matured as
quickly as some experts anticipated. Up until recently, many in the
industry predicted that autonomous trucks would be on the road before
self-driving vehicles were let loose in cities because highways are much
less complex operating environments.

However, while robotaxis are moving customers in three major American
cities and being tested in over a dozen more, driverless trucks remain
stuck in neutral.

The safety case and faster freight
The first thing that companies and proponents bring up when making the case
for autonomous trucking is safety.

In 2022, 5,887 people died in accidents involving large trucks, according
to preliminary National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates.
Supporters of autonomous systems frequently argue that removing the
potential for human error from the equation would necessarily reduce
accidents.

“The vast majority of human driven accidents are caused by drunkenness,
drowsiness, or distractedness,” Sterling Anderson, Aurora’s chief product
officer, told The Verge, echoing a common refrain among AV boosters.
“Autonomous trucks have none of those things.”

Until driverless trucks are deployed at scale, though, this argument
remains purely hypothetical.

“People are the cause of most accidents because, you know, grizzly bears
can’t drive a vehicle,” Mike Di Bene, a Teamsters member and veteran
commercial truck driver, jokingly pointed out.

Proponents of the technology say that beyond removing human error,
autonomous truck systems are safer because of their sensor systems and
programmed defensive driving.

The sample size of autonomous trips is admittedly small, but the trucks
have performed well when it comes to safety, according to publicly
available crash data. In the few reported incidents involving self-driving
trucks in Texas, where most companies have focused testing, other vehicles
have been culpable.

Aurora recently simulated the 32 fatal collisions that occurred between
2018 and 2022 involving a tractor trailer on the Dallas to Houston route it
will be launching on and claims that none of them would have occurred if
the company’s system had been driving.

“Safety is the primary metric by which we measure the progress of our
product,” Anderson said.

The other main argument in favor of self-driving trucks is that they are
capable of moving freight much faster over long distances. Under guidelines
set by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, truck operators are
allowed to drive a maximum of 11 hours a day and have to take a 30-minute
rest after eight consecutive hours behind the wheel. Autonomous trucks
would face no such restrictions.

“With extended fuel tanks, our trucks can drive without stopping all the
way from coast to coast,” Burnette said, estimating that a Kodiak truck
could make the drive from Atlanta to Los Angeles in a little less than two
days. “That’s a game-changer from an industry perspective.”

Self-driving skepticism
Despite the emphasis placed on safety by autonomous trucking companies, the
public and drivers remain far from convinced.

Polling conducted as AB 316 moved through California’s legislature this
year found that close to 80 percent of likely voters in the state would be
uncomfortable with heavy driverless trucks on roads and freeways.

The general public’s reluctance toward driverless vehicles more broadly is
likely to influence their feelings about trucks, no matter how much
companies emphasize that driving on highways is easier than on dense city
streets.

Robotaxis in cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin do not seem to
have assuaged the public’s concerns. In fact, an AAA poll from earlier this
year found that 68 percent of drivers are afraid of fully autonomous
vehicles, up from 55 percent the year prior.

Many truck drivers are unconvinced that driverless systems are safer than
human operators.

“While we think there are places where autonomous vehicles could operate
hopefully without doing too much damage, our roads and streets, our
highways of America aren’t that place right now,” said Todd Spencer, a
veteran driver and the president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers
Association (OOIDA), an organization representing 150,000 truckers across
the US and Canada. “Our members are more concerned than most other drivers
about these vehicles having the potential to kill them.”

Several drivers brought up the situation in San Francisco, where an
autonomous Cruise vehicle seriously injured a pedestrian by dragging her
under a car for 20 feet, as evidence of their safety concern.

“Even in the middle of nowhere, things happen in a split second,” said
Jared Hamil, a Teamsters member currently working at UPS with experience in
commercial trucking. “Whether it be an animal or a car or something, we
have to be able to adjust to that at a moment’s notice.”

Labor organizations like the Teamsters, which represents tens of thousands
of drivers, and the OOIDA have also expressed concerns that autonomous
trucking will endanger the careers of their members.
The jobs debate
Proponents of self-driving trucks argue that concerns about worker
displacement are overblown because adoption will be slow, there is a
shortage of drivers now, and ultimately, the technology will create jobs.

While it is true that the 20 vehicles that Aurora puts on the road next
year are unlikely to put any truckers out of work, unions are interested in
protecting careers in the long term, not just the careers of current
members. A 2018 study from the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that roughly
294,000 long-distance drivers could be displaced by autonomous technology.

Arguments by the industry about a deficit of operators almost always cite
the American Trucking Associations, which claims there was a shortage of
78,000 truck drivers in 2022. Digging into publicly available numbers
(PDF), however, shows the opposite. In California, for example, there were
over 600,000 with Class A or B licenses in 2021 for only 140,000 “truck
transportation” jobs. The problem, groups like OOIDA say, is actually in
retention.

“There’s well over 400,000 CDLs issued every year,” said the group’s
executive vice president, Lewie Pugh, referring to commercial driver
licenses. “They just don’t stay. Within six months to a year they’re gone
because they don’t make very much money. They’re away from home.”

A recent Department of Transportation-funded study found that between
26,400 and 35,100 jobs would be created by automating long-haul trucking
with minimal layoffs.

The veracity of the claims on labor displacement aside, more has to be done
by autonomous trucking companies to address worker concerns.

“Cruise, Waymo, Kodiak, Aurora, not a single one of those companies has put
forward a proposal to demonstrate how exactly they’re going to create new
jobs,” Teamsters spokesperson Matt McQuaid said. “We haven’t heard from the
companies yet on that issue, which is paramount to us.”

That’s not to say companies have ignored workers. Some meaningful steps
toward assuaging labor concerns have been taken. Aurora, for example, has
worked with Pittsburgh Technical College and Gallatin College in Bozeman,
Montana, to train new operators with skills specific to autonomous trucking.

“Honest conversations”
But many labor groups feel like they’ve been left out in the cold.

“Nobody ever says what they’re really trying to do,” Norita Taylor, a
spokesperson for OOIDA, said. “They invite the media for their
demonstrations, and they have a lot of bells and whistles and woohoo-ing,
but they never really say what they’re trying to ultimately accomplish.”

The drivers who spoke with The Verge for this story all said they have
never heard directly from autonomous trucking companies.

When asked about outreach to unions or individual drivers, a spokesperson
for the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association (AVIA) said it “continues
to engage with labor organizations throughout the public process, including
testifying alongside them in various state capitals and participating
together in the California DMV trucking workshops.”

Twenty-three states have already authorized testing or deployment of
driverless vehicles, according to the AVIA, and outside of California,
efforts to regulate autonomous trucks have largely stalled so far.

However, with the increased attention that has already been brought to
driverless vehicles by high-profile crashes and commitments by groups like
the Teamsters to keep fighting autonomous trucks, new efforts to regulate
the technology are bound to emerge. The lead sponsor of AB 316 in the
California State Assembly, Speaker Pro Tempore Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, told
The Verge that she plans to reintroduce similar legislation next session.

“I remain terribly concerned about the impact of lurching forward with
unproven vehicle technology on California workers and public safety,” she
said in a statement. “The industry admitted in public testimony they’ve not
had conversations with their employees about what they might do to mitigate
job losses. Rhetorical pats on the head about ‘more jobs’ with no detail or
concrete plans don’t reassure workers and won’t feed their families.”

The model of requiring a human operator proposed in the labor-backed AB 316
may be a popular one given that it directly addresses fears about losing
jobs and unmanned vehicles being unsafe.

For the industry, the proposal is a nonstarter because it wipes out the
economic benefits of traveling faster and saving on labor costs. “The value
proposition is simply not there if you’ve got a driver in the truck,”
Aurora’s Anderson said.

This position has frustrated drivers like Di Bene, who said it shows the
companies are more focused on the bottom line than safety. “It just bothers
me that these companies, in essence, agree with AB 316 until they want to
sell the product,” he said.

Some studies do suggest that humans are not very good at intervening in
moments of crisis if they’ve largely been disengaged from driving as they
would likely be in these trucks.

An alternative to the compromise of AB 316 could be a system where
autonomous trucks handle long routes between hubs while human drivers
remain in charge for movement within cities and deliveries. But a proposal
along those lines would likely have to come from companies and require
significant outreach to convince workers.

Torc’s chief strategy officer, Andrew Culhane, told The Verge that engaging
in “really honest conversations” with operators will be essential to build
trust and make the adoption of self-driving trucks successful.

“A fear is valid, whether we think it’s justified or not,” he said. “If
they have fears or reservations about this product, we need to have a
conversation about it and understand what’s driving that and what can we do
to move them forward.”

The launch of fully driverless trucks on America’s roads next year could be
definitive for the technology. To see how an issue early on in the adoption
of this kind of system can set back the whole industry, one has to look no
further than Cruise — which, since the accident in San Francisco, has
recalled 950 taxis and announced layoffs.

Companies face a high bar to overcome labor opposition and convince drivers
that autonomous trucks will make American highways safer.

“Until AI can love and fear,” Di Bene remarked, “I don’t need it behind the
wheel because I don’t want to die.”



“Our folks know they do an important job in our society, and hey would
prefer not to see their job eliminated via technology,” Spencer said.
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