The Coming Disruption of Transport

[crs1026]

One of the big takeaways is that expanding into other cities isn't a significant technological challenge, but rather a challenge from the service and infrastructure side.

This supports the view that technology for autonomous vehicles is a solved problem which is demonstrated to work reliably, as seen with demo service in San Francisco and Pheonix.

He never said the technology is a "solved problem". He said the technology has been proven in a specific location where there has been intensive testing under low-load conditions. It will still need to be proven on a 24/7 basis.

Also, this means that we can't just ignore autonomous vehicles anymore. They will disrupt all forms of transport and we need to prepared. Most members of this forum will have likely either ridden in or at least seen a fully autonomous by 2030.

To elaborate on my previous point relating to the freight railways, as we will probably see the rollout of autonomous and electeic truck in the next few years, it will be important to manage their decline and try to stabilize them to ensure their continued existence in the future as autonomous trucks will result in severe losses in volumes for the railways.

I heard him say exactly the reverse. He said the challenge is getting to a "critical mass" ie profitability in a single dense region of use - sufficient chargers, and sufficient vehicles, to create enough market interest to secure committed repeat users. Executing a mass linear transport lane is the exact opposite. To disrupt intermodal rail, one would need to have created enough recharging capability over a longer haul for some proportion of the volume of traffic currently handled. Most existing intermodal business is over distances that will exceed the range of a single charge, even with improved batteries. Two or three chargers every couple hundred miles won't enable much market penetration.

But certainly I can see the terminal drayage in SFO being ready for AV's very soon. And next, I can see adding drayage centers at the other end of whatever route the containers are taking. That might open up the range of pickup and delivery that an existing intermodal hub can serve economically - ie generate more business for rail not less.

Remember, also, that the railways are also automating. Their economics are also improving.

- Paul

 

[C_Johnson_1995]

He never said the technology is a "solved problem". He said the technology has been proven in a specific location where there has been intensive testing under low-load conditions. It will still need to be proven on a 24/7 basis.



I heard him say exactly the reverse. He said the challenge is getting to a "critical mass" ie profitability in a single dense region of use - sufficient chargers, and sufficient vehicles, to create enough market interest to secure committed repeat users. Executing a mass linear transport lane is the exact opposite. To disrupt intermodal rail, one would need to have created enough recharging capability over a longer haul for some proportion of the volume of traffic currently handled. Most existing intermodal business is over distances that will exceed the range of a single charge, even with improved batteries. Two or three chargers every couple hundred miles won't enable much market penetration.

But certainly I can see the terminal drayage in SFO being ready for AV's very soon. And next, I can see adding drayage centers at the other end of whatever route the containers are taking. That might open up the range of pickup and delivery that an existing intermodal hub can serve economically - ie generate more business for rail not less.

Remember, also, that the railways are also automating. Their economics are also improving.

- Paul

Scaling on the fleet and business side is the easy part, so to speak. It is really a matter of capital investment.

In general, I believe we have reached an inflection point in the s-curve of mass adoption for AVs. The proceeding of test programs will be defining for where the space is headed in the future and judging from what we have seen so far it will likely only accelerate.

Regarding range for EVs, the solution to this is full electrification of motorways with overhead wires, which would then also eliminate the need for a truck to stop along its route for refuelling and recharging entirely, upping efficiency and competitiveness.

It is for these reasons which I believe in order to counter these threats, we need full rail nationalization to take advantage of network capacity and economies of scale.

What we see today with adoption of AVs holds strong parallel to the adoption of automobiles and truck. At first the railways didn't see them as a threat, but as their infrastructure improved and adoption increased, it took away swathes of traffic, took the title as the dominent place for land transport and left the industry at the breaking point.

It never serves to underestimate a new disruptive technology.

 

[kEiThZ]

S-curves are about adoption. Not tech development. The tech has to reach a point of viability before adoption. Not there yet. It's close. But it could be close for 5 years or 25 years. Who knows? Most notably because removing the driver cannot be a progressive linear decision. By is nature, it's binary. There's no half self-driving. There's either a driver. Or there isn't. This sets a very high threshold for general adoption to start.

 

[afransen]

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt did an interview. This reddit post gives a summary and includes the link to the interview:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/v5mq6k

One of the big takeaways is that expanding into other cities isn't a significant technological challenge, but rather a challenge from the service and infrastructure side.

This supports the view that technology for autonomous vehicles is a solved problem which is demonstrated to work reliably, as seen with demo service in San Francisco and Pheonix.

Also, this means that we can't just ignore autonomous vehicles anymore. They will disrupt all forms of transport and we need to prepared. Most members of this forum will have likely either ridden in or at least seen a fully autonomous by 2030.

To elaborate on my previous point relating to the freight railways, as we will probably see the rollout of autonomous and electeic truck in the next few years, it will be important to manage their decline and try to stabilize them to ensure their continued existence in the future as autonomous trucks will result in severe losses in volumes for the railways.

Full nationalization and consolidation would be a good way to accomplish this as duplicate track and excess capacity would be able to be cut. For example, traffic through northern Ontario from Sudbury to Winnipeg could be consolidated on CP, with CN's line abandoned should traffic drop low enough.

I also think that Transport Canada should be carrying out detailed studies on how autonomous vehicles will shift the competitive balance between modes of transport and the economy as a whole as this would be very useful in future planning, especially urban planning.

I'm not nearly as bearish on railways. I can see their intermodal business being eroded but the proper incentives will be put in place to ensure we're not needlessly pounding our roads into oblivion moving grain by truck.

 

[afransen]

But certainly I can see the terminal drayage in SFO being ready for AV's very soon. And next, I can see adding drayage centers at the other end of whatever route the containers are taking. That might open up the range of pickup and delivery that an existing intermodal hub can serve economically - ie generate more business for rail not less.

Are you familiar with TuSimple? What makes you think it would not be relatively trivial for them to add charging infrastructure to support their business once BEV trucks are widely available? Even if third party charging infrastructure operators don't spring up to serve the trucking industry, large carriers have the resources to install their own, and will be strongly incentivized to do so by the lower operating costs.

 

[afransen]

S-curves are about adoption. Not tech development. The tech has to reach a point of viability before adoption. Not there yet. It's close. But it could be close for 5 years or 25 years. Who knows? Most notably because removing the driver cannot be a progressive linear decision. By is nature, it's binary. There's no half self-driving. There's either a driver. Or there isn't. This sets a very high threshold for general adoption to start.

Not sure about this. Remote supervision is a thing. Having one remote operator manage 10 vehicles would be quite advantageous for both freight and rideshare.

 

[crs1026]

Are you familiar with TuSimple? What makes you think it would not be relatively trivial for them to add charging infrastructure to support their business once BEV trucks are widely available? Even if third party charging infrastructure operators don't spring up to serve the trucking industry, large carriers have the resources to install their own, and will be strongly incentivized to do so by the lower operating costs.

The interesting thing would be not unlike railway divisional points - how far apart do you need to space them ? And how do you optimise them for traffic so you don’t overbuild? In the short term, one might need to wait until battery range reaches a workable plateau. Or build in locations that may eventually be unnecessary.

Over the longer term, AV’s may open up new transport markets, but the existing railroad intermodal market is centerred around a subset of container movement much of it intercontinental.

I’m imagining a “perfect world” scenario, where a supersize container ship arrives at Vancouver or Oakland or Long Beach. As each container is offloaded, it is dropped directly onto an AV and begins its journey immediately (customs formalities being equally automated and apart from random inspections, every container is precleared). What does that flow look like along I-15 or the TCH? And what scale of recharging infrastrucure would be needed in Kamloops or Flagstaff to service that flow?

Railways will eventually solve their velocity issues - they are largely of their own making, the result of undercapitalising in terminals and passing capacity and insisting on superlong train operation.. Even with AV’s the comparison in fuel and ROW maintenance costs will still favour steel rail and steel wheel. Railway trains can also be automated, although nota perhaps without more capitalisation than is currently desired.

But - all those containers rolling down I-40?

- Paul

 

[afransen]

Railways will eventually solve their velocity issues - they are largely of their own making, the result of undercapitalising in terminals and passing capacity and insisting on superlong train operation.. Even with AV’s the comparison in fuel and ROW maintenance costs will still favour steel rail and steel wheel. Railway trains can also be automated, although nota perhaps without more capitalisation than is currently desired.

Sounds like the competition from autonomous electric trucks will be good for everyone if it forces railroads to shape up.

Bringing lettuce and strawberries etc. from California to Ontario is a business that is screaming for autonomous electric trucks. We could be getting produce that harvested days later/fresher, with much reduced carbon footprint. And there are potential wins of pulling back air freight like Amazon makes extensive use of to ground instead.

The other potential advantage of AEVs is making driver availability/preferences less of a concern for utilizing highway capacity at night instead of during peak commuting hours. This is where time of use road pricing will become quite valuable.

 

[lenaitch]

If the goal is to get California fruit and vegetables (does anybody actually eat those flavourless, white-centred things they call strawberries?) here faster, then picking and choosing when to use the highway won't be part of the plan.

Although California to Ontario covers a lot of jurisdictions, would it reduce the carbon footprint or just move it? The US still gets 22% of their electric from coal and 38% from natural gas.

I'm still waiting for an AEV to operate consistently through the mountains year-round. Do they have little mechanical arms that install the chains if there is a mandatory chain-up order?

 

[crs1026]

If the goal is to get California fruit and vegetables (does anybody actually eat those flavourless, white-centred things they call strawberries?) here faster, then picking and choosing when to use the highway won't be part of the plan.

Although California to Ontario covers a lot of jurisdictions, would it reduce the carbon footprint or just move it? The US still gets 22% of their electric from coal and 38% from natural gas.

I'm still waiting for an AEV to operate consistently through the mountains year-round. Do they have little mechanical arms that install the chains if there is a mandatory chain-up order?

LOL. I recently had a wonderful stereotypical Boomer-Millenial debate with a family member, who was defending their trendy dietary regime as low-carbon and thus better for the environment than my traditional meat-eating diet.. My rebuttal was that products like Chilean grapes which are shipped long distances are by no means low-carbon and don’t belong in such a philosophy, otherwise the fashion is a bit fanciful.

Part of the inflation in food costs is because we demand year-round access to products grown in distant places, instead of eating that food seasonally only when it can be grown locally. Even if the transportation labour is cheap, in future can we afford the energy, even low carbon energy, to ship California berries to Ontario ?

This digression is simply to make the point that the labour cost savings of AV’s, and the fuel cost alternatives of EV’s, both matter to the disruption and may interact. As do infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, as do operational costs like using tire chains.. The result may be complicated. Declaring that AV’s will be the winner because they are labour-reduced is a bit simplistic.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

LOL. I recently had a wonderful stereotypical Boomer-Millenial debate with a family member, who was defending their trendy dietary regime as low-carbon and thus better for the environment than my traditional meat-eating diet.. My rebuttal was that products like Chilean grapes which are shipped long distances are by no means low-carbon and don’t belong in such a philosophy, otherwise the fashion is a bit fanciful.

Part of the inflation in food costs is because we demand year-round access to products grown in distant places, instead of eating that food seasonally only when it can be grown locally. Even if the transportation labour is cheap, in future can we afford the energy, even low carbon energy, to ship California berries to Ontario ?

This digression is simply to make the point that the labour cost savings of AV’s, and the fuel cost alternatives of EV’s, both matter to the disruption and may interact. As do infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, as do operational costs like using tire chains.. The result may be complicated. Declaring that AV’s will be the winner because they are labour-reduced is a bit simplistic.

- Paul

This is similar to my view that many seem to feel that they/we can maintain the the current lifestyle and economy and still completely eliminate oil. Short of 'the next battery breakthrough', I've yet to hear of a realistic alternative for container ships and cargo planes that carry billions of dollars of consumer goods we apparently can't live without. Local industrial-level greenhouses will likely help with food, and no doubt tech changes will enable some of the thousands of petro-based materials to be sourced from other feedstocks, but the mid-1800s come to mind.

 

[crs1026]

This is similar to my view that many seem to feel that they/we can maintain the the current lifestyle and economy and still completely eliminate oil. Short of 'the next battery breakthrough', I've yet to hear of a realistic alternative for container ships and cargo planes that carry billions of dollars of consumer goods we apparently can't live without. Local industrial-level greenhouses will likely help with food, and no doubt tech changes will enable some of the thousands of petro-based materials to be sourced from other feedstocks, but the mid-1800s come to mind.

The glass is half full in that there is reason to believe that on a continental basis, we can generate enough sustainable energy through wind, solar geothermal, etc to do far better with transporting goods than the 1850's.

There will have to be a major re-pricing of oil to align its use to the most critical needs, and force its exclusion from low-value activities so that overall consumption fits within the sustainable carbon envelope (as defined by Nature, not by governments). That disruption will be even further reaching than automation of transport.

We might still be able to afford Chilean grapes, but delivered by land using non-petro energy transport. That might imply north-south transportation infrastructure that doesn't exist today. The investment decisions for that infrastructure will be interesting. The changes in pricing of all those goods may be far more disruptive than AV-EV-road-rail comparisons.

- Paul

 

[MrGoose]

This is similar to my view that many seem to feel that they/we can maintain the the current lifestyle and economy and still completely eliminate oil. Short of 'the next battery breakthrough', I've yet to hear of a realistic alternative for container ships and cargo planes that carry billions of dollars of consumer goods we apparently can't live without. Local industrial-level greenhouses will likely help with food, and no doubt tech changes will enable some of the thousands of petro-based materials to be sourced from other feedstocks, but the mid-1800s come to mind.

Green Hydrogen (electrolyzed from water using renewables or nuclear) can be the replacement for oil where batteries and electricity cannot be used.

 

[lenaitch]

The glass is half full in that there is reason to believe that on a continental basis, we can generate enough sustainable energy through wind, solar geothermal, etc to do far better with transporting goods than the 1850's.

There will have to be a major re-pricing of oil to align its use to the most critical needs, and force its exclusion from low-value activities so that overall consumption fits within the sustainable carbon envelope (as defined by Nature, not by governments). That disruption will be even further reaching than automation of transport.

We might still be able to afford Chilean grapes, but delivered by land using non-petro energy transport. That might imply north-south transportation infrastructure that doesn't exist today. The investment decisions for that infrastructure will be interesting. The changes in pricing of all those goods may be far more disruptive than AV-EV-road-rail comparisons.

- Paul

It might harken back to the era when an orange was a legitimately special Christmas present.

Green Hydrogen (electrolyzed from water using renewables or nuclear) can be the replacement for oil where batteries and electricity cannot be used.

In terms of large capacity transcontinental transport, I await the first commercially-viable demonstrator.

Besides, are we just trading consumption of one finite resource for another?

 

[MrGoose]

It might harken back to the era when an orange was a legitimately special Christmas present.


In terms of large capacity transcontinental transport, I await the first commercially-viable demonstrator.

Besides, are we just trading consumption of one finite resource for another?

Hydrogen when created from saltwater and renewables is effectively infinite