Tesla's Robo-Trucks: $80 Trillion Game-Changer – Partial Automation Still Revolutionizes 2026

Platooning trucks will change the economics of trucking hugely.  One driver for several trucks rolling.  All much sqfer.

All this will make winter roads and mountains much safer as well.  With self driving the temptation to crank it up will dissapate.

This is not airship robotics, but it is a way forward for truck haulage.

I still want to see railcars on airpads doing 150 mph for a thousand miles.

Tesla's Robo-Trucks: $80 Trillion Game-Changer – Partial Automation Still Revolutionizes 2026

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There is an intermediate step before fully automated self-driving (FSD) trucking and that is automated truck platooning, where multiple Tesla Semi trucks follow a lead vehicle with only one driver for a whole fleet. This is enabled by advanced FSD software available in 2025. This would be significant scale starting in late 2026, leveraging Tesla's Nevada factory ramping-up 50,000 trucks per year. Semi should be at 10,000–20,000 units annually in 2026. Semi trucks leveraging platooning could make $250,000 to $300,000 per truck. 20,000 trucks would be worth about $5-6 billion per year in profit in 2026 for about $200 per share. In 2027, this would be 60,000-70,000 trucks making about $17 billion per year in platooning mode or $34 billion per year in full autonomous mode. This would add $500-1200 per share.

Key benefits include massive cost savings—diesel trucks cost $1.50/mile, Tesla Semi ~$1.20/mile solo, ~$0.80/mile in a three-truck platoon (due to reduced driver needs, fuel efficiency, and higher utilization like 200,000+ miles/year), and down to $0.40–0.50/mile with full autonomy.

Robotrucking even compare robo-taxis: trucking has no price cliff after scale, constant ~$2.20/mile revenue, higher utilization (75–85%, 800–1,000 miles/day), and a $2+ trillion global market.

Projections show platooning with 100,000 vehicles yielding $28 billion/year in profit, full autonomy doubling that to $56 billion (adding ~$2,500/share to Tesla's stock at a 40 PE).

They discuss regulatory support (29 states allow driverless trailing trucks), Tesla's internal freight savings ($1 billion/year), global variations (e.g., higher rates in China due to fragmented markets), and broader impacts like lower goods costs and economic transformation.