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Why Cars Aren’t the Real Stars of the Autonomous Revolution

Intel AI

Driverless car startups are booming these days, many with rock-star valuations. Automakers also now talk about rolling out autonomous taxi services by 2019, but here’s a quick reality check: By some estimates, we’re still 15 years away from truly autonomous vehicles being available to the general public, once you consider the complications of regulation, insurance and the critical last-mile challenges of human safety.

For example, carmakers and autonomous startups have to date not agreed on any sort of data-sharing system to allow vehicles to talk to one another, a mandatory step prior to unleashing full autonomy in passenger vehicles. The Uber self-driving car fatality in Arizona in the spring of 2018 further illustrates that driverless cars remain a work in progress.

The economic need or demand for driverless cars also remains unclear. While thousands of people have signed up to buy the next Tesla, there are no such waiting lists of buyers agitating for a truly driverless set of wheels. In fact, the general public remains largely suspicious of driverless cars. In a June survey of 1,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area, only 46% indicated they would be willing to ride in one.

Closer to reality is the realization that autonomous technology is more likely to have an impact in sectors where the pain is greatest and where customers are in immediate need of AI-powered solutions. In trucking, for instance, a growing shortage of drivers for long-haul routes is pushing up consumer costs and driving demand for autonomous 18-wheelers.

To see where the broader future of autonomous transportation is headed, it’s smarter to follow the money and the pain points. Here are several areas where either money can be saved or labor is in short supply—and where autonomous tech will soon pay off.

Freight Hauling 

For a peek into the autonomous transportation future, consider this scenario: You can order a Frigidaire appliance in Southern California and follow the autonomous 18-wheeler run by logistics giant Ryder and powered by autonomous truck startup Embark.

The 18-wheeler is hauling fridges from a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, 650 miles to a distribution point in Palmdale, California, and a human assistant rides along to ensure safety and to take over should something happen. This is prelude to a future when far fewer humans drive trucks because the economics of a human-powered trucking system are rapidly going south.

The transportation industry is considered ripe for autonomous disruption. The United States already faces a labor shortage of more than 51,000 truck drivers, a number that will only rise, thanks to impending requirements that truckers use electronic logging devices to track their hours, which will result in lower wages because of less time on the job and behind the wheel.

Against this shortage lies a steady increase in the demand for trucking transport due to continued economic growth and the even faster growth of ecommerce, which pushes more goods into the supply chain than ever before.

With trends like these, it’s no surprise that driverless trucks are becoming a hot startup market. Autonomous trucks allow drivers to drive longer routes by taking full control on the highways, or by allowing a single driver to lead a convoy of trucks, with each follower closely mimicking the driving behavior of the one in front. Already, three companies—Starsky Robotics, Embark and Google-backed Waymo—are racing to crack the driverless truck marketplace and have proof-of-concept vehicles on the roads hauling actual loads.

Food Delivery: From Restaurants to Consumer Kitchens

Food delivery is another area ripe for autonomous disruption, especially as areas become more congested and consumers increasingly expect their food to be delivered in the shortest time possible. As one McKinsey report on the delivery marketplace explains, “consumers accustomed to shopping online through apps or websites, with maximum convenience and transparency, increasingly expect the same experience when it comes to ordering dinner.” That helps explain why the online food-delivery sector, according to McKinsey, is expected to grow 15% annually through 2020. Autonomous technology will no doubt drive some of that growth.

Today, a half-dozen companies, including Robby, Marble, Kiwi and Starship Technologies, are testing small delivery robots the size of large coolers around the United States. These robots don’t take up precious room in surface-street traffic, don’t emit greenhouse gases and can park in tiny spaces. They also can ultimately take deliveries right to a customer’s door, unlike a car, which requires a driver to stop the vehicle and park, all too often illegally.

The benefit of all this? Quicker, more efficient delivery. Kiwi, for instance, argues the robots can get food from a restaurant to the hungry human who ordered it 65% faster than human delivery people. How does this work? Dozens of robots ride along with a human in a large semi-autonomous electric tricycle to drop zones, where they’re unleashed to cover, by themselves, the last 300 to 500 meters of delivery—the portion of the run that Kiwi researchers have determined to be the most inefficient and time-intensive for couriers. In the Bay Area alone, Kiwi has delivered tens of thousands of meals.

Marine Transport: Autonomous Takes the Helm 

Maritime shipping is another sector that would reap the benefits of autonomous technology and entrepreneurs from both ends of the spectrum, from YCombinator graduate Shone to industrial giant Rolls-Royce, are looking to deploy AI and autonomous systems to help move goods more efficiency.

And it’s no wonder: Container ships move roughly two-thirds of the value of total global trade, or more than $4 trillion worth of goods, according to the World Shipping Council. These seagoing giants can transport as many as 8,000 containers holding tens of millions of dollars of goods per run. This doesn’t even count shipping of precious resources, such as oil and liquid natural gas, or the so-called dry shipping business for commodities such as wheat or soybeans.

As in trucking, the economic pressures are intensifying, which only heightens the demand for autonomous technology. Today’s global shipping market is massively oversupplied with vessels leading to steady declines in freight rates on big boats of nearly all classes and types. This puts heavy economic pressure on fleet owners to reduce costs.

Luckily, autonomous technology can help in this regard. Shone, for example, hopes to add intelligence to navigation systems that takes into account tides, weather, currents and winds to ultimately assist mariners in selecting the most energy-efficient courses. Because ships move so much material and consume so much fuel, even a 1% improvement in efficiency could yield enormous benefits. Systems like Shone could cut costs by allowing vessels to run more efficiently with less fuel, but also with significantly smaller crews, which would reduce costs as well.

The Wildcard—The Human Factor 

As autonomous trucking, shipping and food delivery systems take root, it remains a foregone conclusion that driverless cars will inevitably join, and eventually replace, conventional vehicles on the road.

One potential factor is traffic congestion. An INRIX study found that in the U.S. alone, traffic jams cost Americans $305 billion in wasted hours and fuel consumption in 2017. That cost will only rise with booming populations of urban areas. Recent National Science Foundation research shows that even the introduction of a few autonomous cars into the traffic mix could slash fuel use by 40% and reduce stop-and-go braking by 99%.

But no matter what trends ultimately spur the mainstreaming of self-driving cars, one major obstacle will have to be overcome: human fear. Consider the airline industry, for example. Today, most commercial jets include autopilot systems largely capable of flying and even landing autonomously. Yet when first introduced, the public was very skeptical of these systems. As they became more common though, society grew more and more comfortable with the idea. Autonomous passenger cars will win over society’s trust in the same way.

For now, though, don’t get too caught up in what Waymo and its $175 billion valuation comes out with next. If you really want to see where autonomous tech will play out in the next few years, look to areas where the logistical pain for consumers and companies is becoming too much to bear.

Learn more about how companies are leveraging AI today.

CREDIT: Oleh_Slobodeniuk/iStock