Autonomous trucks will haul your stuff before you ride in a self-driving car

Enlarge / The Einride T-pod autonomous concept truck. (credit: NOVA SAFO/AFP/Getty Images)

Driverless technologies are disrupting transportation around the globe. Though most experts disagree on when humans will be replaced behind the steering wheel by artificial intelligence, few doubt that it will happen.

Until now, passenger cars have taken center stage in the transformation from driven-to-driverless. It makes perfect sense; people movers are currently at the heart of the "Mobility as a Service" business model popular within the transportation sector and taking the human driver out of a bus, cab, ride-share, whatever form of mobility service it might be, is the quickest path to profitability.

But the more the industry experiments within MaaS, the more it feels that the car's 18-wheeled counterpart-like the tractor-trailer or long-haul truck-will make the most immediate socio-economic impact. It's a matter of the early bird gets the worm, as the saying goes.

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