For trucking I think self driving can be, in the short term, an opportunity for owner-operators. An owner-operator of a conventional truck can only drive one truck at a time, but you could have multiple self driving trucks in a convoy led by a truck manned by the owner-operator. And there might be an even greater opportunity for this in Europe thanks to the low capacity of European freight rail compared to North America.
I used to think this sort of thing too. Then a few years ago I worked with a SWE who had experience in the trucking industry. His take was that most trucking companies are too small scale to benefit from this. The median trucking operation is basically run by the owner's wife in a notebook or spreadsheet- and so their ability to get the benefits of leader/follower mileage like that just doesn't exist. He thought that maybe the very largest operators- Walmart and Amazon- could benefit from this, but he thought that no one else could.
This was why he went into industrial robotics instead, where it was clear that the finances could work out today.
Yeah, I guess the addressable market of “truck owners who can afford to buy another truck but not hire another driver” might be smaller than I thought.
Trucks are harder. The weight changes a lot, they are off grid for huge stretches, mistakes are more consequential.