Electric semi tractors are impractical in all but drayage use cases (port to warehouse short haul). Even then, they require specialized yards and hours to charge, and they are twice as expensive as diesel tractors. Refueling a diesel truck takes minutes. Plus the electrical grid impact to supporting the charging of these trucks, keeping just 50 trucks charged annually uses as much electricity as a decent sized town.

For autonomous trucking, you’re grossly underestimating 1) how dangerous these trucks are. A small rear end accident with a car does some damage, a small rear end from a tractor with 80k pounds of cargo kills people. 2) They are hard to drive, hard to navigate in cities, require inspections constantly for roadworthiness and safety. Sure having a tractor pull a load on a few hundred miles of straight empty highway in Texas is doable today, having that same truck get to a warehouse in the center of Dallas is a nightmare even for pro drivers. 3) Plus no one knows how to legislate or regulate these things. If a robot tractor kills someone, who is at fault? The vehicle maker? The autonomy software maker? The carrier? There are already nuclear verdict lawsuits for these types of situations with human truck drivers that can be tens to hundreds of millions of dollars I.e. shut down a carrier bad. You think a bunch of octogenarians in congress know what the hell to do with any of this stuff?

I say all of this while also fully agreeing that consumer autonomy seems to have been solved or is on its way to being solved, I’d bet in 5 years it will be weird to get an uber and there’s a person actually driving. Commercial heavy duty trucking is a whole different class of problems that goes well beyond “can the software do it”.

Source: I make software for trucking carriers and drivers