Self-driving trucks 10 hours faster than a truck driver.. Could they be the key to switching to self-driving?

There is currently a shortage in the number of truck drivers around the world, and this shortage has exacerbated with the boom of e-commerce, which has spread after the pandemic, and one of the solutions to address this shortage is the development of self-driving trucks, which prompted a number of companies to compete to be the first to provide a truck that drives itself On their own without the need for a driver, among them is the American company TuSimple, which is headquartered in San Diego, which was founded in 2015. The American company has completed nearly 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) of public road testing of 70 of the company's experimental trucks across the United States, Europe and China, which are real trucks chosen from among the trucks available for sale in the market and equipped with its self-driving technologies. company. TuSimple has also signed with two of the world's largest truck makers, the American company Navistar and the German company Traton of the German Volkswagen Group, where the company has reached an agreement under which it will design and manufacture self-driving trucks by 2024, the company says Self-driving truck tests The company's latest tests included a test drive on a 951-mile highway - more than 1,500 km - from Nogales, Arizona, to the state capital of Oklahoma. Although loading and unloading was done by a human driver, the truck drove itself through most of the way. Commenting on this test, the company’s president and CEO (Cheng Lu) said: “Today, because the system is not fully ready, we put a driver and an engineer in the truck in order to maintain safety at all times during the test, but we have adopted a fully autonomous driving system, as the driver did not touch the steering wheel.” The trip took place in 14 hours compared to the 24 hours that the truck driver takes because the trucks do not need to sleep, as the manager explained, “In the USA a driver can only work 11 hours a day, and we simply had to make a switch when the two drivers completed 11 hours Work.” Of course, implementing the system in this way is not practical because it does not provide any benefit in reducing the need for drivers, so when TuSimple trucks are launched on the market, there will be no drivers. Unlike self-driving cars, which we explained in previous articles that they still need a long time before they are available for sale in the market in a commercial and safe manner, (Two Simple) trucks will not need to work in traffic jams within cities, but will be relied on to transport goods on Highways, which have been mapped in detail through the software developed by the company.