When would the autonomous truck finally arrive in ports?

In my 2018 opinion-article, I stated that the business case for autonomous trucks usage in ports is too strong to ignore. My view then was that autonomous trucks would arrive in ports before they do in cities. Clearly, this has not happened. In this follow-up article I review the current state of the technology and argue the prospects for the technology’s deployment in the non-too-distant future. ?

From hype to disappointment

As an industry trend, the autonomous-car project began in 2009 with the strategic commitment by Google of bringing a working product to market. According to recent estimates, over $160 billion dollars have been invested since then by the automotive industry in autonomous vehicle technologies. The expectation was that large-scale deployment of robotaxis in cities would eventually justify these immense investments. ???

The autonomous truck was initially widely viewed as less important than the robotaxi because there is generally less money to be made in carrying goods than in carrying people. Nevertheless, as time went by it became clear that city-deployments were far more complicated than expected. It was then when the autonomous truck became more attractive to tech companies because it presented far simpler deployment opportunities on highways and closed terrains such as mines and ports.

So far however neither technology has come any close to wide-scale profitable deployment. Recent highly publicised project shut-downs and scale downs of autonomous-vehicle projects by companies such as Apple, Ford, VW and General Motors have underlined the failure of the technology to mature into a viable product.

The main reason for this unfortunate situation is the industry’s failure to correctly assess the true technical difficulty of engineering a safe autonomous vehicle. ???????

The implications for ports

Automotive-industry players have made various attempts to deploy early versions of the autonomous truck in ports. We at the Port of Rotterdam, for example, carried out a tender process for a large-scale autonomous-truck deployment on the Container Exchange Route (CER) back in 2020. Unfortunately, it was concluded at the time that the technology was not ready for this specific commercial deployment.

Other ports, mostly in Asia, have seized the opportunity of using new SAE Level-4 automotive technologies within upgraded (“intelligent”) Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV). These advanced machines, while being technically superior to legacy AGV’s cannot leave the port and are, at least in this respect, far less advanced than even current robotaxis.?

As a result, despite numerous serious attempts, the automotive industry has so far failed to significantly enhance port automation and capture much of the large, potential business-value of Level-4 truck deployment in ports. ??

What’s next?

It is my opinion that, in business and in life there is a vast space lying between total euphoria and total disaster. While in hindsight the autonomous-truck seems to have been over-hyped as a potential port-automation solution it is also far from being doomed.

While venerable industry players have publicly exited the race others have strongly stayed the course. Notably, Waymo (formerly, Google Self-Driving Car Project) has been expanding its robotaxi operations into new cities and so far, firmly withstood both great public-opinion challenges and legal scrutiny in successfully offering a safe, consistent, and widely accessible service.

Yet even Waymo is reportedly far from rendering these early robotaxi operations profitable. Arguably this is because it still relies largely on remote control and a standing army of human operators in the loop.

To my surprise, the autonomous truck has so far not progressed significantly faster than the robotaxi despite enjoying obvious benefits of simpler highway and closed-yard deployment. Waymo, for example, has shut down its autonomous-truck operation Via in July 2023 citing its focus on robotaxi deployments as being the reason.

In addition to stubbornly slow technical progress and shifting industry focus another reason for the delay in autonomous-truck deployment in ports is found in the need to integrate these trucks into notoriously inflexible port legacy systems such as container terminal operating systems (TOS). This step will undoubtedly take significant time.

My prediction, therefore, is that autonomous trucks would mature into a mainstream solution for port automation within three to five years (i.e. between 2027 and 2029). Indeed, I see the current end of the hype-phase as a positive sign of technological maturity. At the same time, I still believe that deployment in ports is far simpler than existing deployment we can already see with our own eyes in numerous cities in China and the US.

Time will tell. ?