
An ex-trucker has some questions about the Tesla Semi - ranit
https://www.autoblog.com/2017/11/19/tesla-semi-trucker-questions/
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jeddawson
A bit of background: I've done thousands of hours of driving in rolloff
trucks. They're semi's that load debris containers onto rails mounted over the
chassis, haul the load to the transfer station/landfill, and deliver
containers to job sites. Now I write software for the industry that I used to
labor in.

I completely sympathize with the concerns in the article, but I have faith
that Tesla will be able to overcome the challenges and some of them are
perhaps not looking at the trucking industry "of the future" here's a good
example:

The concern about a roll down window isn't that big of a deal. Doing rolloff
meant crossing a scale multiple times per day where you'd exchange paperwork
with the scale house attendant. I just completed a project that will keep
drivers in the cab while at a landfill/transfer station if they have a tablet
and the site is connected with our scale software. All of the interaction is
done on a tablet while the truck is on the scale, the driver never leaves
their seat or rolls down a window. If we're doing stuff like this for garbage,
surely other trucking is going to be be digitizing these types of interactions
and there are some nice big screens in the truck to make it easy.

The biggest concern that I share is the passing issue with a center seat, but
that should be easily solved with a camera that shows a forward view when a
turn signal is engaged. Two big screens mean you'd get a forward and all the
blind spot views necessary to make a safe pass.

Side note: If Tesla wants to make a version for hauling trash, they could have
an enormous impact on local emissions.

~~~
tmzt
What's stopping a tractor/trailer from weighing itself, if a large manufacture
r was to pay a very large bond to ensure that spot checks were valid?

I was suprised to see there are 13,000+ freight brokers in operation. Where's
the Uber?

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bryanlarsen
Re: central seating position. Try driving a combine harvester or an
agricultural tractor pulling a long train of equipment. They can be heavier,
longer, and/or wider than a semi. They use a high central seating position for
a reason.

Re: mirrors. They're not there for aerodynamic reasons. The semi has a lot of
cameras, so you'll have to use the screens. Sometimes a mirror or sticking
your head out the window might be preferable, but it's a reasonable
substitute.

Re: night mode. It'd be nice if they used OLED screens with a dark theme so
you can really crank down the brightness and black is completely black. Still
time to change that if it isn't, so hopefully somebody from Tesla is reading
this and/or advocating for it.

~~~
prklmn
Are you comparing a semi truck driven at 70 mph in between two lanes of
traffic to a piece of farm equipment that maxes out at 15mph and is typically
driven without another vehicle in sight?

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hwillis
Farm equipment still has to be driven with <6" of clearance on either side so
it doesn't drive onto produce rows. Semi trucks aren't passing people going 70
mph faster than they are, and vehicles to the side and rear won't be going at
a bigger speed difference than 15 mph. You only have to worry about things
coming at you at 70 mph from the front.

~~~
prklmn
It's still an absurd comparison. I'd venture to guess that the average combine
is driven in a straight line at a set speed at least 95% of the time it's
being used.

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bluGill
The worry for combine drivers is that last 1% of the time when they have to
get that big machine (with wheels on it takes a lane and a half). Then running
at 15mph they have to get from field to field. There is a big problem with
other drivers (cars) seeing it from well back and not realizing it is going
slow until it is too late and they rear-end it. Or they realize it is going
slow in time, but because it is slow they decide to pass on a blind corner (or
perhaps pass just as the combine passes a mailbox and so it cannot move over).

Yes rural roads do not have a lot of traffic, but they are not empty.

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empath75
A lot of those problems seem to revolve around line of sight issues, which
won’t matter because the thing will be loaded with sensors.

And one additional thought: When evaluating a potentially disruptive
technology, the opinion of veterans is important and may indicate that they
won’t ever adopt the new technology in massive numbers. However veterans by
definition have a lot of hard earned experience, which means they won’t see
the benefits of automation and ai assistance, while people new to the field
will have the benefit of not having to gain that experience to be productive.
Which means that the old tech will age out as veterans retire.

~~~
jaxbot
But on the other hand, Tesla already has a few notable sensor failures, the
biggest one being the fatal crash when the sensors failed to see a semi truck
at 90 degrees to path of travel (or cancelled it out as noise, etc.)

Obviously things improve with time, but Tesla has never convinced me of having
a robust pipeline for validating their sensors/AI projects. Everything they
release feels like someone said "well, it's good enough for how much we're
willing to spend." Notably, their refusal to evaluate LIDAR when every other
company is banking on it.

~~~
dewski
You don’t think Tesla evaluated LIDAR at all? I’m sure they did preliminary
tests to confirm or deny what they could and couldn’t do with it.

Considering every car produced by Tesla in the last two years has Autopilot, I
think their pipeline is pretty great at gathering data for every car and
performing tests against the data they gather.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
LIDAR sensors are expensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla stopped
evaluating them right there and thought, looking at the price of regular
camera sensors, “Well, humans have two RGB cameras in their head and seem to
do just fine. We can replicate that!”.

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jdc0589
I'm curious how stuff like a rear view camera is going to work since it seems
even more essential now given the seating position. Do truckers now have to
install/re-install a camera on trailers when they pick them up? Is it
wireless, so that means batteries?

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thisisit
A mini rant on this site - I just got uMatrix installed and the amount of
scripts on this page is overwhelming. In spite of enabling most CDN related
stuff, the article doesn't show up. Used the "reading mode" and somehow the
article shows up.

~~~
foepys
> I just got uMatrix installed

Sometimes you need to reload the site without cache with Ctrl+Shift+R. uMatrix
can be a bit finicky.

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xHopen
Says a horse rider about a car

~~~
martinko
I think he has some constructive points, don't know if I would really label
him a Luddite...

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xHopen
How many years till will won't need drivers?

Tesla should just kill driving and go fully autopilot, it's insane that a
human has to drive a truck from point A to B, is just a waste of time and
extremely dangerous.

~~~
MBCook
You want to trust an 80k lbs semi in driving rain and sleet on a frozen
mountain pass?

There are tons of conditions that even the best autonomous systems are no
where near ready for.

It’s going to be a while.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
Yes.

Because when the autonomous systems are trained on how to handle adverse
conditions, its the sum of the knowledge of all machines that build how to
handle these conditions. Whereas each human has to learn it individually. And
given how bad people drive even with rainstorms, I'd put the money on the
computers.

And frankly, we can also discuss if "driving in rain/sleet on frozen mountain
pass" is even a good idea. Because computers can also provide data like
"Estimated chance of wreck is X%", and decisions can be made using that.

Tl;Dr. One machine learns and can share with all nearly instantaneously. 1
human learns and that's it.

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krylon
> And given how bad people drive even with rainstorms, I'd put the money on
> the computers.

In the long term, yes, definitely. And I am looking forward to the day.

But it is going to be a while, and it is going to be a while longer until all
the politicians and insurance companies are convinced of that, too.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
I can easily see insurance companies being convinced of that a lot sooner.
Why, you might ask?

An "auto" will have less incidence of wrecks and drive provably safer. And the
"auto" will also record everything as proof, so if there is a wreck involved,
it's a simple "download and review the footage". Guilt is now easy to prove as
well as trivial to exonerate.

And all of those things will bring the cost of insurance down for the
insurance companies. And many of them will then lower their rates
appropriately given very high standard of proof they provide.

After all, insurance is heavily based in the sciences and mathematics. If they
weren't, insurance companies wouldn't last very long at all.

Now, I have no clue on how to get politicians to understand science. I'm not
sure if that's even possible, as science can easily go against an ideology -
and thusly their political stance.

~~~
prklmn
I think that your thinking is too shortsighted. Autonomous driving, if it's
going to be as rosy as you and I both think, is going to be what kills much of
the auto insurance industry. What we have now are more serious and more
frequent accidents compared to the ideal future, yielding higher premiums.
Higher premiums --> higher cashflow --> higher profitability for insurance
companies. Sure, they want to see fewer accidents - but if it's to an extreme
to the point where competitive forces dramatically bring premiums down, the
insurance business won't be so great. I see insurance companies lobbying very
strongly against autonomous driving in the near future.

