Profit margin. The driver just isn't an expensive or limiting part of cargo transport.
To be clear, the conversation also isn't about autonomous driving for individually-owned cars. Tesla's disasters aside, its about autonomous taxi services.
Are you in the freight industry? Because drivers are exactly what is expensive and limits growth right now. there is a humongous supply of trucking jobs, and they are paying really high rates right now (up to 70-80 cents per mile)
Both would be valuable - but a truck that is 30% more fuel efficient is probably going to save more money than one that doesn't need a driver (but still needs people more loading).
There are different estimates everywhere - but I usually see 20-30% of trucking costs are drivers. In other freight industries (cargo ships, trains, etc.) it would obviously be less.
Thanks for that chart, but I read it differently. Just because something isn't the No 1. cost doesn't mean people aren't interested in lowering the cost. So let's say there are 3 million truck drivers in the US that earn an average of say 50K {1}. That's $150 Billion in costs per annum. Sure, there are other costs that are higher, but if you could lower that only by 50% -- say automate some (but not all routes), that technology would save $75 Billion per year, and that number would grow with inflation. Even at a real discount rate of 8% (10% with 2% inflation), that is worth 937 Billion dollars -- nearly a trillion. Now let's say the software vendor who solves this splits the savings with the trucking industry, so they get 37.5 B per year and the industry gets the other half. That's some nice recurring revenue, worth significant investment if it's technologically feasible.
So this is all about scale. Everyone is obsessing over Uber for cultural and political reasons, but there are 1/10 as many taxi drivers as truck drivers, and they earn half as much. The big money is in trucking, and even if the problem is only half solved (say just for some long-haul routes), it would be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, even if truck driver wages are not the single most expensive cost. Hell they could be the 10th or 20th most expensive, what matters is the billions that could be saved, not the rank ordering.
Another thing is that autonomous truck can drive 24h. In most countries there are regulation how often drivers have to take a break, e.g. in Poland after 4.5h of driving truck driver need 45min break, after 9h there is mandatory minimum 11h break.
In Australia on the major trucking routes, many trucks are company owned and are handed over to fresh drivers at rest stops. The trucks can proceed to destinations while the drivers sleep
To be clear, the conversation also isn't about autonomous driving for individually-owned cars. Tesla's disasters aside, its about autonomous taxi services.