The ever-increasing freight and leisure traffic, however, has been causing long traffic jams at busy times even without border enforcements. The Brenner Pass is the only major mountain pass within the area; other nearby alternatives are footpaths across higher mountains at an altitude of above 2,000 metres (6,600 feet). As a result, air and noise pollution have generated heavy debate in regional and European politics. As of 2004, about 1.8 million trucks crossed the Europa Bridge per year.
There's an alternative to only on motorways and never on motorways: sometimes on motorways.
90% of the time you can use ordinary roads, with autonomous driving acting like a normal truck, giving the meat bags plenty of space. The most congested 10% you can build restricted access paths only for your smart trucks where they can act more like a train, with minimal spacing, increasing the traffic capacity of the road/tunnel/bridge/whatever so the extra cost of constructing it pays off sooner and/or it's cheaper in the first place because it's not built for drivers so doesn't need to be as safe.
One goal of a project like this is to reduce the number of trucks on the road, which reduce quality of life for people living near and using the roads, regardless of what powers them.
That's really not a factor. The most popular semi truck in America, the Cascadia, is rated for 52,000 lbs GVWR. Kenworth T680 has a 64,000 lbs GVWR. Both far short of the 80,000 lbs limit.
The eCascadia has a 230 mile range on a 475 kWh battery. If you make that 1.5 MWh, it'll handle essentially any trip a single driver can make before his workday is over. A 1.5 MWh battery works out to ~17,500 lbs. Subtract the engine, exhaust, and fuel weight from those trucks and the majority of tractor trailers on the road will still be under the legal weight limit.
The largest factor is the lack of charging (detouring to hit a charger is very costly) and the cost of batteries that size.
Run it at night, at economically efficient speeds, in convoys, on motorways and you get 80% benefits with 20% of the effort. No cyclists, roundabouts, driveways, parking, children, back roads, routing you've got less other traffic, could modify the road itself, run more smaller trucks, EV versus diesel, no tired human living away from home to worry about. Use Bus Rapid Transit corridors at off-peak times.
Feels like something thats going to go from stupid to standard very quickly once some tipping point gets hit (probably based on battery availability).
My thought as well, trucks will always be more flexible, using existing road infra. It’s hard to see how tunnelling is a better idea, cool as it sounds.
