Good news... dreaming of BEV Class A

DrewE wrote:

Of the major transportation systems to be fully automated, trains would seem to me to be the most straightforward. The steering is already automated, so it's only speed control--and, with that, collision avoidance--that is required of the crew; and the speed cannot be changed any too quickly due to physics. There are plenty of fully automated small-scale and medium-scale train systems in operation carrying passengers already, such as for instance the Dubai metro.

Yes, the train would be most simple. And in switch yards and such instead of one driving train in response to signals from the man doing the unhooking, the ground man works the drone controls. But when a train with one man crew parks, the man goes to eat and the train looses air and rolls away. Of course, it is the crew's fault.

At any rate, there's no real requirement for a driverless truck to be an electric truck; it's not really a more complicated problem for a computer to control an engine and transmission and braking system with a gas or diesel engine than it is for an electric motor. Indeed current engines are almost universally computer controlled already, as are modern automatic transmissions, and braking systems partly computer controlled with ABS and stability control systems. The much trickier problem to sort out is how to reliably navigate and interact with other vehicles and drivers on the road system, which is not really designed for automated/driverless vehicles.

True dat. But, terminal to terminal operation would be best use of E power, and also for letting the robot drive. Back in the late '70s often the freight haulers could tell time by the mile marker. That kind of "know the road" would be faster for the computer to learn.