Right now, to move one trucks' worth of cargo for one hour requires one man hour. i.e.: 1 man-hour per cargo-hour.
If you have a single human that full-services 200 self-driving trucks in one day, you have: 1 man-hour per 200 cargo-hours.
Sure, autonomous refueling is easier than self-driving, but self-driving trucks also makes the human relatively way cheaper to employ.
The usual standard for automation, I believe, is 18-24 months salary - if the capital cost can be recouped in two years automation is worthwhile. For hundreds of well-paid truckers that's a relatively generous target, but automating a reliable gas pumping system just to save on one minimum-wage gas pumper looks like a much lower ROI.
The other $40,000 was spent on NEW machines that automatically do NEW processes which we could never do before. I have a lot of pressure from the market to deliver new goods, and I have a lot of competitors both in the USA and in China and India copying my existing products. So this investment is about new streams of revenue (and I like toys/equipment!) . This is a $500 per month investment on the lease.
I have a reasonable expectation that the new machines could help us achieve a sales doubling in the next three years.
So in my case, 18-24 months salary replacement was never the thought process. It was honestly more about getting rid of a supplier, bringing it in-house to control quality and output, and saving money. I have a lot of automation, and I think the bigger concept most don't get is that the automation is way way more accurate and repeatable than a human. Quality goes up as costs go down. The quality part is a big big part of it.
Do you think it's possible to deliver an automated gas pump that services 4,800 trucks per day (~1 truck every 3 minutes) for $120k? I don't.
At least, not without more automation than existing pumps have.
My numbers do break down in that one guy per shift probably can't fuel everything, so we might need to double it. (In states with locking pumps, he probably can, though.)
It's not just a factor if he can possibly fill every truck by himself, there are other human factors to consider. You need at least two men manning the station all the time for the autonomous trucks to refill there + maybe a spare guy for regular folk who come to visit.
Automation that relies on humans to minimally function is garbage.
After factoring in the cost of the robotics I suspect paying humans minimum wage is quite a bit cheaper. Especially given the diverse outdoor environments such a system would need to be maintained in
It's been done a few times.[1][2] The systems are rather slow and clunky, but work. Dealing with all the variation between cars runs up the cost.
Tesla has a charging robot.[3] This is much easier, since Tesla controls both sides of the interface. The car actively cooperates, opening the charging port door. Tesla also interlocks the car so that you can't drive away while plugged in. I'm surprised that Tesla hasn't deployed those robot chargers yet.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y_J7fg03fA [2] http://mashable.com/2014/01/29/robotic-gas-pump/#hDxoRZBZ5Zq... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI
Compared to building an autonomous truck, autonomous refueling seems like the easy part.