This report provides Transforma Insights’ view on the Autonomous Road Freight Vehicles market. This segment comprises vehicles used for transporting goods on roads in a commercial setting. To be counted as part of this Application Group, vehicles must be capable of operating at Level 3 (L3) of the SAE levels of autonomy.
The autonomous road freight vehicles market is at a nascent stage with an enormous potential to disrupt the road freight market. The adoption of L3 autonomous freight vehicles is gaining momentum with multiple governments around the world supporting the testing and commercialisation of autonomous vehicles on roads, although concerns around the safety and performance of these vehicles can act as a deterrence to the pace of mass adoption. The initial focus of most technology companies is proving the concept of commercial L3 vehicles and allowing shippers, carriers, and logistics companies to embrace and familiarise themselves with their usage.
The report provides a detailed definition of the sector, analysis of market development and profiles of the key vendors in the space. It also provides a summary of the current status of adoption and Transforma Insights’ ten-year forecasts for the market. The forecasts include analysis of the number of IoT connections by geography, the technologies used (including splits by 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, LPWA, short range, satellite, and others), as well as the revenue split between module, value-added connectivity and services. A full set of forecast data, including country-level forecasts, sector break downs and public/private network splits, is available through the IoT Forecast tool.
The report examines key factors that are influencing the development of the autonomous road freight vehicles market, including:
This section first discusses the potential of the autonomous road freight market to disrupt the freight market. It talks about the sensors and machine learning algorithms that these vehicles use and explains them separately. For instance, the perception system used in these vehicles is supported by AI, LiDAR, cameras, GPS, ultrasonic sensors, motion planning software, and radar systems to sense a vehicle’s surroundings and the road ahead.
It then expounds upon government initiatives that are supporting the adoption of autonomous road freight vehicles, charts the growth trajectory of these vehicles, and mentions the factors which may deter this adoption as well.
In this section, we consider some of the benefits that autonomous freight vehicles can bring.
This subsection talks about the potential of autonomous vehicles in the context of the rising e-commerce industry (which demands faster and on-time delivery of goods to customers), shortage of available drivers (according to the American Trucking Association, there will be a shortage of 160,000 drivers by 2031), and the problem of ageing driver workforce. It also touches upon the disadvantage of autonomy in commercial transportation – joblessness for drivers and the need for lawmakers and businesses to come up with a balanced approach.
This subsection focuses on how autonomous trucks can reduce road accidents (which often take a toll on people’s lives, lead to monetary loss due to insurance claims, and result in productivity loss and heavy penalties) by handling long stretches of highways, allowing drivers more time to relax and rejuvenate, and stepping in if drivers get distracted.
It explains how autonomous trucks will decrease greenhouse gas emissions and reduce fuel consumption through methods such as truck platooning, which is estimated to save around 4% fuel. It also talks about the detrimental effects on the environment from autonomous technologies since they require extreme computing power and massive cloud storage, resulting in GHG emissions, and hence, the need to improve software and hardware accordingly.
This subsection discusses the importance of moving towards a more sustainable and environment-friendly mode of transportation by the road freight industry, which will come through the rapid transition from diesel to electric (D2E), which will also play a key role in the adoption of electric autonomous vehicles. It also talks about some of the challenges associated with electric trucks, like the time required to charge these trucks, their limited range, and lack of charging infrastructure.
This section of the report argues that regulations will be the most important factor behind the adoption of autonomous road freight vehicles and then, in a tabular form, it lists the existing regulations in the EU, Japan, China, South Korea, Germany, and the United States.
It also provides a few examples of relevant IoT deployments in this application like Walmart using autonomous trucks for middle-mile connectivity.
The key vendors section lists some of the main providers of products and services related to the market such as TuSimple, Aurora, Embark, Inceptio, Plus, Torc Robotics, Kodiak Robotics, Einride, and Tesla. The report provides profiles of the various vendors including aspects most relevant to this Application Group, such as product offerings, pricing, financial results, and technology.
In the market forecasts section, we provide a summary of the forecasts from the Transforma Insights IoT Forecast Database:
The report charts the growth in the number of Autonomous Road Freight Vehicles Revenue Generating Units (RGUs), which will grow from 10,500 in 2023 to 1.1 million in 2033.
Transforma Insights forecasts are compiled on a country-by-country basis. This report includes a regional summary, showing splits between Australasia, Greater China, North America, Europe, Japan, Latin America, MENA, Russia & Central Asia, South East Asia, South Korea, India & South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforma Insights’ IoT forecasts include splits between the various connectivity technologies as follows: 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G mMTC, 5G non-mMTC, LPWA (non-mMTC), Satellite, Short Range, and Other.
This section discusses which technologies will be used in the autonomous road freight vehicles application group.
This part of the report discusses the market growth in terms of revenue (module revenue, service wrap revenue, and VAC revenue). Transforma Insights estimates that the revenue in the Autonomous Road Freight Vehicles Application Group will grow at a CAGR of 55%.
