Set up a distribution center on I90 30 miles outside Chicago (e.g. Gary Indiana) set up a distribution center on I80 30 miles outside New York (e.g. Paterson NJ). Use human drivers for the last 30 miles, and automation to drive the rest. The route doesn't go through any heavily trafficked areas except Gary and Cleveland, which you could avoid by starting the route at 9pm for a 9am arrival with travel through Cleveland occurring at 2am. I'd say that with current technology we could probably do this in less than a year. Since trucks cost about 150k new and truck drivers can't drive 12 hours straight, the economics of full automation are much easier to justify.

Having driven back and forth from Chicago to New York a couple of times, I would welcome autonomous trucks driving throughout the night, especially if they strictly adhere to the right lane at a moderate, passable speed. Once night falls, truckers take over the road, and they typically like to go at or slightly above speed limit, making it less of a cozy environment for regular sedan drivers.

> Freight generally needs to be handle all of the problems that a cab does (turning, stoplights, other cars, getting from point A to point B, etc.), mostly because pretty much all freight trucks need to go through a town/city at some point.

Freight consists of both long and short haul, with different needs and approaches. Your point applies to the "last mile" delivery phase, which may or may not be a significant part of the operation.

In fact, many big stores like Walmart, Costco, Aldi, and the like are placed pretty close to an interstate exit. I would guess that this allows significant reduction in costs, as the operators don't need to switch from their optimized long haul vehicles (big trailers, etc) to more maneuvarable, less efficient (per unit weight of goods) trucks for the last mile stage.

There is plenty of freight that is carried on highways over long distances with low traffic volumes, in a similar role to rail freight.

> Additionally, they need to be able to drive at night in areas without much lighting,

During winter at higher latitudes a lot of driving is at night. As for lighting, plenty of city streets are dark and have poor lighting at night.

> they need to drive for hours and hours on end, instead of just 5-45minutes, etc.

So? Fatigue is something that affects human drivers. There should be no serious differences for an autonomous vehicle driving 10 30 minute trips and one 5 hour one, modulo start and stop. In fact, if anything, longer duration trips tend to involve a greater fraction of highway usage that does not require significant brake usage, turning, etc.

> Finally, they are 40+ feet long (instead of being around 15 feet long) and have much less maneuverability and a much longer stopping distance/time.

I agree with this.

> they need to drive for hours and hours on end, instead of just 5-45minutes If you assume that whatever vehicle considered is being driven near full-duty-cycle, the total amount of time is roughly conserved (perhaps autonomous vehicles will get 2x-3x utilization per day, for better or worse)

You could create a system, potentially using truck stops or in some way your own infrastructure, which is a docking point for autonomous vehicles. At these locations, human drivers pick up and drop off the otherwise autonomous vehicles, allowing humans to take the burden of the difficult portion of driving, while computers handle the boring part of driving. Of course, you would have to place similar stops every (80% of a tank of gas, measured in distance), as well for refueling. Naturally, this idea has a dozen holes at the moment and would need to be improved to be viable.

The economic win (and comparatively easy problem) is to have trucks self drive on the interstate, stopping on the outskirts of whatever city or town is the destination to pick up a human driver who will take care of the "last mile".