The logistics of the future: Driver-less cars

One emerging technology that has been getting a lot of hype in the past few years is the self-driving car.

Not long ago driver-less cars seemed more something taken from a science fiction movie than a reality, but in the year 2016 as a result of increasing sophistication of computer navigation, GPS technology and camera technology, driver-less cars are a reality and multi million dollar companies like Google or Apple have been investing in the development of the technology that will send the majority of car and truck drivers to the dole office.

The logistics industry will probably be one of the first training grounds for such automated vehicles and shipping companies will probably adopt the technology faster than other industries.

But have you ever wondered what will be the impact of driver-less cars and trucks on the logistics field in general? Below you can see a few aspects that most defiantly will be affected:

- Safety: Improved safety driven by a reduction in human errors

- Lower environment impact: Driven by fewer vehicles on the road and more efficient fuel consumption

- Higher efficiency: By allowing trucks to travel 24/7 without requiring rest time

- Warehousing operations: through technology like autonomous loading, auto pallet movers and assisted order picking (we talk about this in another post that you can read here)

-  Last mile delivery

- Reduce drive shortage in the trucking industry:

- Costs savings: Some of them include: labor costs through the reduction of drivers, fuel consumption through a more efficient drive, vehicle utilization and insurance cost.

If you want to go in depth, I’d recommend you to read the below report by DHL that really go into detail:

DHL driver less cars report

And for those still reluctant to believe that this is coming, and I can tell you it’s coming soon, watch out!