It seems that every major tech company is working on autonomous transportation. The auto companies are already selling cars with semi-autonomous features and these technologies are already getting to the point they are safer than humans driving. One major beer company has already had a self-driving truck deliver beer from their manufacturing facility to one of their large warehouses. Google has nearly a million miles of autonomous driving in CA and well over that in Nevada now. Yep, no people in the vehicle and I guess this is the future. Of course, if you drive for a living; limo, taxi, delivery, truck, bus driver, well, let’s just say your days are numbered – scary thought yes, but this is the future of work – it’s going not to hell, but to the robots.
Indeed, I read an interesting article in the premier Electric Vehicle online news outlet “Charged” titled; “US Postal Service commissions prototypes for possible future plug-in vehicles,” written by Charles Morris on October 14, 2016 which stated:
“The USPS has selected a design from Indiana-based manufacturer AM General (best known for the Humvee military vehicle and its civilian cousin, the Hummer) as part of its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle program, under which several prototype designs will be designed, built and tested over an 18-month period. AM General will build a series of prototype vehicles that seek to provide ‘fuel efficiency and zero-emission capability.’ The Postal Service will determine production requirements and future vehicle replacement award(s) after prototype testing.”
This is wonderful, but the USPS needs to get with the program. The USPS needs to think with more vision – these vehicles should be autonomous and deliver the mail without people. Why not? You see, these vehicles go on the same exact route every day, they stop at each mailbox at an exact location, every day. The driver opens the mail-box and puts in the mail – heck even a simple robot can do that task and the driverless autonomous mail jeep can get it there, on-time, every day, rain or shine.
Maybe this will help the United States Postal Service from losing billions of dollars per quarter? And, don’t worry about the job losses, we can use attrition and allow early retirement for the postal carriers. We are talking about faster mail delivery, lower costs, no price rises in stamps, and good use of some great robotic autonomous car technology – it’s the perfect application for autonomous transportation robotic technology. Think on this.