I have no doubt that (autonomous vehicles) is the route they will go down, but doing that would be to do what British government and business nearly always does and follow the herd down a blind alley throwing bundles of our money into the air.
For long distance, economic, rapid and sustainable movement of freight in volume only the railway is a realistic proposal at present - we know it works, we know it causes less damage to the environment and we know we'll be able to keep it going once the oil runs out. We even have a lot of it in place still. If they want to do electric / electric and autonomous vehicles after that, it would be far easier to do short range collection from a railhub and delivery than it would be trying to replace long distance lorries.
Obviously though that would require a big investment in infrastructure, and an admittance that the road lobby / government have got it expensively wrong for the past sixty years.
A lot of the early results suggest that it will be the long-distance stuff that gets automated first as driving on the motorway is that bit easier (and it's largely that which is unpleasant for the drivers themselves), with the last-mile still be done by human drivers. I know there have been various experiments into road surfaces that recharge electric vehicles as they pass over them, but the investment required to make that a reality suggests it's quite a way off yet.
Of course, all of this would be superseded if hyperloop ever goes anywhere, which I kinda doubt it ever will.
But when... Thought automated lorry conveys were supposed to be a thing by now already, I seem to remember (dream/night terror maybe). Cameron babbling on about his vision of one driver convoys.
Still some considerations to be made All sounds great in theory however, there some devil in the detail!
How does such a convoy get started up? You'd need depots that lead right onto the motorway as you couldn't run such a convoy anywhere other than on a trunk road. What happens if the lead driver has a seizure/faints? Well same as now I suppose - but many times worse! Lots of dead people. What happens if the motorway is closed and all traffic must leave the motorway onto non trunk roads?
And from a personal note from some who uses motorways often, how are other road users going to exit the motorway if a convoy is blocking them in the left lane?
Looks like precursor to the high tech Brexit border solution in Northern Ireland, load of old bullpoop with too much magic mushroom tea at Green Patry conference.
