By LIU Yi
At a mine in northeastern Shandong province, the heart of China's coal industry, twenty trucks trundle about their business without drivers.
Driver-turned-operator, SUN Xingli sits in a room with screens on the walls and steering wheels sprouting from the floor. Compared with working in the shimmering heat, Sun said, it was easier work, and, more importantly, safer work. Sun's mine is planning to invest in another 20 of these electric self-driving trucks.
The rise of self-driving startups has been astonishing, but the vision of city streets teeming with driverless cars remains a distant horizon and one we may not even want to reach. Self-driving trucks, on the other hand, are doing very well indeed, particularly in the mining industry. Hiring enough truck drivers has been a constant problem for mine managers.
The job itself is grueling. LIN Qiao, vice president of self-driving truck maker Eacon, said drivers work at least 10 hours a day, seven days a week. Beyond the long hours, sweltering summer and dusty environment, tedium is probably the biggest threat to driver’s physical and mental well-being. If there was never another vacancy for a mining truck driver, no one would complain. It is precisely the kind of job that technology should put an end to.
These near-intolerable conditions have created an ideal environment for electric self-driving trucks to flourish. The fixed and relatively short routes in mines are well-suited for autonomous operation. And most of the trucks are electric, offering energy-saving benefits.
Autonomous trucks are part of a wider ecosystem of unusual vehicles. They rely on the assistance of graders and sprinklers, many of which are already autonomous – supervised rather than operated - and have been for years, but they're not so smart.
Many older or smaller mines, however, lack the infrastructure required for these new vehicles. Currently, most of autonomous trucks can be found maneuvering the lunar landscapes of large strip coal mines.
As coal and fossil fuels are phased out, the future of the self-driving truck lies in other mineral mines, driving forward the green transformation of the industry.
