Autonomous Vehicles
Experts expect the self-driving truck to triumph
The robot car company Aurora shows a self-propelled semitrailer at the CES technology show in Las Vegas. photo
© Andrei Sokolow/dpa
Desperate search for truck drivers – the transport industry in many countries is complaining about a lack of employees. In addition, there are high wage costs for the drivers. Does the autonomously driving truck have what it takes to be a “game changer”?
According to estimates by the management consultancy Berylls, driverless trucks will account for around 10 percent of sales by 2030. The autonomous truck will help the transport industry against the increasing shortage of drivers worldwide and at the same time save about a fifth of the costs, the industry experts wrote in a study published on Tuesday.
In the USA alone, there is likely to be a shortage of around 160,000 truck drivers by 2030. Self-driving trucks are the only way out of this bottleneck. At the same time, driver wages accounted for more than 40 percent of the costs – if only every tenth heavy-duty truck in the USA were to drive autonomously, $25 billion (24.5 billion euros) could be saved annually. According to the study, the autonomous truck is “the ultimate game changer” and will redistribute the added value in the industry.
Investors are waiting for results
The five largest specialized tech companies in the US alone – Waymo, TuSimple, Aurora, Embak and Plus – collected 5.6 billion dollars from investors last year. However, investors soon expected returns. The majority of these tech companies do not sell the technology as a supplier to the truck builders, but offer it to the transporters as a service for a fee. With planned gross profit margins of 80 percent for the tech companies, the freight forwarders and fleet operators still have savings of between 14 and 27 percent compared to today’s total costs. According to the study, they should benefit from competition from tech companies.
Truck manufacturers, on the other hand, would have to open up to partnerships, make their vehicles and software fit for the new technology, and drastically shorten development times and product cycles.