For that same reason, I think you're likely wrong about trucks. I suspect that autonomous - at least for the over the road portion of tips - will be highly compelling. American industry loves to substitute capital for labor costs, and that exactly what autonomous trucks do
Just some napkin calcs. In the US alone there are a total of 12.5 million heavy trucks registered (1). There were 288k heavy trucks manufactured in the US last year, up 20% from the last year (2). That works out to 43 years to replace the current fleet at the current production rate. It also passes the gut check because you'd expect to see trucks manufactured in the 80s to still be running, not so much trucks from the 70s. So even if we double production rates, it would be 20 years before we can replace all heavy trucks. That won't meet demand.
My takeaway is that there is a lot of money to be made in an add on solution that can somehow add the value of autonomous driving without manufacturing a new truck. This is low hanging fruit. It's a big deal to build and tool up an automotive plant. It's a different story when your bolting on a few parts and adding complex software controls. You don't need million dollar presses, welding robots, etc. You just need a few key components sourced from existing suppliers (motor drives for steering, brakes) a computer, likely with some nvidia edge computing stuff, and some fancy software that is hard to make initially, but easy to install on millions of trucks with the above hardware. This is a much more easily scalable business than making whole trucks, and therefore has potential to capture more market share faster, and ultimately could meet the demand faster. In a rate limited situation anything to increase that rate adds value, and I argue that this business model has a lower cost of entry, is more easily scalable, and avoids many of the pitfalls of starting an automotive/truck company.
It'll be a combination of both new autonomous heavy trucks and retrofits I imagine.
1. https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/large-trucks-and-buses-nu....
2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/412815/heavy-truck-produ...
Battery powered trucks are also expected to have lower downtime for maintenance and overhaul, so you can shave off another 5%. Rebuilding an engine and gearbox is an expensive maintenance activity that is completely eliminated, along with brake servicing due to regenerative braking.
Once the charger situation is figured out, probably an overhead catenary and dedicated charging lanes to keep the trucks in motion while charging, the savings will be compelling.
It's not true that brake services are eliminated, these trucks will still need conventional brakes. Yes there are some servicing savings, but these trucks have already been refined to be very reliable and have long periods of time between maintenance activities. The time savings due to less maintenance will be in the noise, maybe a few percent. The cost savings will be more, less fluids, etc.
The big factor here is the labor savings, all other efficiencies are there, but insignificant in comparison and will not be the driving factors for adoption - the labor savings will.
Any source on that claim? I thought they reduced the costs of lidar to be in the order of a few k.
Waymo claims they will cost somewhere in the 150k range.
But regardless, I think even 100k is still quite different than "hundreds of thousands".
Not to mention the kid with the $500 Civic is almost certainly delivering faster than any autonomous vehicle will, robots won't chase lols and tips.