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While most public attention is focused upon self-driving cars, use of autonomous technologies for interstate trucking seems poised to play a bigger and more immediate role in reordering the nation鈥檚 roadways.

With long-haul trucking delivering nearly 70 percent of goods in America, the business case for automated driving technologies is strong. Fuel accounts for about one-third of the cost of operating a long-haul rig, and once on the highway, digitally connected or paired autonomous trucks could be platooned, or operated en masse as convoys at optimized speeds while reducing wind drag to save fuel. Highway driving avoids many of the safety risks posed by autonomous vehicles in city driving, most particularly the risk of collisions with pedestrians.

With the American Trucking Associations reporting a current shortage of about 50,000 drivers and a need for nearly 900,000 new drivers over the coming decade (due in large part to an aging workforce), automating trucks will help. However, as discussed below, this may be seen as a two-edged sword.

Automated 18-wheelers are already being tested on long-haul routes, albeit with human operators behind the wheel ready to take over if needed.

Portland-based Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) makes Freightliner tractors, the top branded Class 8 tractors in the U.S. with 37 percent of the market, according to statistics website Statista. Later this year, one of Freightliner鈥檚 top customers will begin testing trucks outfitted with automated systems proprietary to Daimler鈥檚 Detroit Assurance brand in day-to-day operational settings on public roads.

In February, an autonomous Class 8 tractor operated by San Francisco-based Embark completed a 2,400-mile, five-day run between L.A. and Jacksonville, Fla. In March, Uber Freight began using automated trucks to make deliveries in Arizona.

To manage situational awareness, automated vehicles utilize drive-by-wire networking of radars, cameras and ultrasonic or laser sensors to operate electromechanical actuators mounted on steering, throttling and braking mechanisms.

Retrofit of a tractor with a system developed by Otto, acquired by Uber鈥檚 Advanced Technology Group in August 2016, is said to have cost about $100,000. But analysts say the goal is to get Class 8 truck automated systems down to a $20,000-$30,000 retrofit price point, compared to as much as $150,000 to purchase a fully fitted-out tractor today.

Prices have dropped for Lidar, the pulsed laser light detection and ranging technology that has been the most expensive self-driving vehicle component. Luminar recently announced it will sell a version for about $250 per unit once mass production begins later this year.

Derek Rotz, director of advanced engineering at DTNA points to many technical, legal and societal challenges that need to be resolved. Overriding all else is the need to ensure safety. The most likely scenario is that autonomous vehicles will be deployed through a series of step-by-step building blocks that see incremental adoption of automated technologies over time.

Government regulation is a prime consideration. State regulation of automated trucking will need to be harmonized. But analysts believe that as automated systems increasingly prove themselves, regulators will mandate that manufacturers integrate such systems into their vehicles.

How the population as a whole comes to see autonomously operated trucks is likewise a central concern. The efficiencies enabled by autonomous technologies can free up driver time to perform logistical tasks, from scheduling to routing. But the greatest efficiencies will be found in vehicles that can operate driverless over long stretches of highway.

Looking forward, the model would call for human operators to drive autonomous rigs through city streets and congested intra-urban highways to transfer hubs where a number of rigs would be assembled into platoons. Once highway bound, platoons would be remotely overseen by operators at central facilities in a manner not dissimilar to how operators pilot military drones, except that the rig operators would oversee a platoon of trucks as opposed to a single drone.

As far as the two-edged sword, the big concern is job loss. A December 2017 report by McKinsey Global Institute projected that close to 1.5 million jobs could be displaced by automation in the trucking industry over the coming decade. Not all projections are so dire. 鈥淐reative destruction鈥� scenarios modeled by Uber ATG portray efficiencies created by a system with humans driving the last mile of automated truck routes as potentially creating more jobs due to growth in truck freighting and more affordable consumer goods.

It鈥檚 a big step from Level 3 automated vehicles (driver must be ready to take over at any time) to Level 4 (still has a steering wheel but vehicle can operate autonomously under pre-programmed scenarios and conditions) to Level 5 (full autonomy on any road under any drivable conditions; no steering wheel needed).

Declining to make any predictions as to when, DTNA鈥檚 Rotz believes that the road to seeing fully automated Level 5 trucks on the nation鈥檚 highways will be a long one.

It will likely take years to capture the full potential of autonomous long-haul trucking. But it鈥檚 clear is that automated trucks are here to stay, and you鈥檒l be seeing more and more of these vehicles on the roads.

Matt Slavin in 2018 founded M.I. Slavin to provide consulting in project management, strategic planning, research and communications. Contact him at 503-619-5601 or [email protected].