Following years of hype and media fanfare surrounding autonomous vehicles, many technology and passenger vehicle companies have recently softened their stance around what is feasible in the short and medium terms. Key players are shifting their focus to automating highway driving, an easier problem to solve that inner-city traffic, and with it also shifting to automated trucking rather than robocabs.
Roland Berger recently published a Whitepaper on the autonomous truck space finding that 20% to 40% of the US Class 8 truck fleet could operate without a human driver by 2035, offering operating cost saving potential up to 40%, While we anticipate that large scale adoption is still a long way off, this trend will be disruptive rather than evolutionary, and industry participants from truck OEMs, to suppliers and carriers need to start preparing for their role in an automated world today.