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The argument is that without drivers, the economic benefit of fewer, larger trucks largely vanishes. So since smaller trucks will be economically equal or better than large ones, they will become more common.
The problem is, how much does a large truck cost compared to smaller trucks carrying the same amount? I tried but failed to find anything about this. Does anyone more knowledgeable than I am have any sources?
I don’t have data, but I imagine it’s case specific, all over the map, and the combination of electric and self driving probably resets the whole marh. In some cases the change is huge (not every truck uses all its cube volume) and in some cases it’s meaningless (the furniture and appliance delivery has to send two people anyways, tailor the vehicle to a full day’s worth of deliveries). Two electric drive trains may be cheaper than one diesel motor, smaller loads mean smaller cheaper batteries. But how many dump trucks do we want on a construction site at a time?
Assuming AEVs drop the cost of driving below the cost to operate private vehicles, and we (have to) use road pricing to ensure we don't have congestion or too many people switching to cars from transit etc., you can potentially get pretty big numbers. In Canada, there are 400B vehicle km travelled per year (and growing at a decent clip). Even if we can only charge $0.10/km road pricing on average, that is $40B per year in revenue. The GTA's share of that is probably on the order of $10B per year on population basis. But given that many of the most congested roads in the country are in the GTA, the road pricing would be higher here. It could easily translate to $20B or more of additional revenues that could support investments in transportation infrastructure. It's basically enabling the enormous tax private car ownership represents on households with funds that can go to public benefit.
electrek.co
Autonomous vehicles will play a large role in massively cutting traffic for a variety of reasons. Mentioned in the quote is one of them.
And this right here is where the hostility comes from.
Road capacity will remain a challenge, particularly because AEVs will result in a big increase in VMTs. They can also play a big role in making transit more relevant to more users (minibuses).The
Many in the urbanist community are irrationally hostile to autonomous vehicles, but like it or not, they are coming and fast. Mobileye, a leader in the space is deploying starting in 2022, and by 2025, Mobileye's Amnon Shashua is anticipating significant market penetration. It puts things into perspective, especially when we have so many transit projects which, when taking into account the impact of autonomous vehicle, probably won't be needed.
Investing in a light rail line now is like building an interurban railway in the late 1920s. Times are changing and it won't last long.
Also, I think that people here should find this quote illuminating:
Autonomous vehicles will play a large role in massively cutting traffic for a variety of reasons. Mentioned in the quote is one of them.
