Net-Zero Carbon recap: Autonomous trucks a boon to decarbonization

KEY QUOTES FROM MERICLI 

“When we first started Locomation, we saw the most practical path to fully autonomous operations is using existing autonomous vehicle technology to augment, rather than to replace or displace, human drivers. We focused on freight trucking, in particular, the need for more supply chain capacity and lower carbon emissions.”

“The [emission] situation is really really dire. About one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, about 80% of all those come from road transportation, and about a quarter of the road transportation greenhouse gas emissions come from medium- and heavy-duty trucking.”

“You need to rethink the way loads are scheduled and optimized and assets are allocated in order to deploy autonomous assets in the future, be it the convoy concept (two trucks following each other closely) or be it the solo drivers. Optimally, autonomous trucks will not be a true drop-in replacement to anything and everything human drivers are doing today for a really long time, perhaps ever, so we need to change the way we are thinking about how the supply chain, how the operations, how the load planning will work, in order to deploy and get the most ROI out of these expensive autonomous assets.”

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