pedream. They’re right around the corner and will begin being utilised by retailers like Walmart from 2019. Delivery companies such as DHL and Titanium will also be taking advantage. All are now on the pre-order list for Elon Musk’s latest innovation – a fully-electric truck that’s being billed as safer, more efficient and seemingly inevitable. Unveiled late last month, Tesla’s move on the trucking business has put grins on the faces of many futurists. Musk says the trucks can travel more than 800 kilometres on a single charge while hauling over 36,000 kilos. “Because the vast majority of routes are under 250 miles, it means you can go to your destination and back without recharging – you could deliver a load to the middle of nowhere and come back,” Musk told an audience at Tesla’s reveal event. “The economics of trucking matter immensely…a diesel truck when you take into account the full cost of trucking will be 20 per cent more expensive than a Tesla Semi.” What’s more, Musk says the trucks outperform existing diesel ones on speed and torque, while recharging most of its capacity in half an hour – something that can be done while loading and unloading. The vehicles will also communicate with each other on the road, creating convoys automatically when driverless functionality, which comes standard with each vehicle, is switched on. The impact on retailers What does this mean for Australian retailers? In the short-term, not much. But long-term, there may be a potential broad-based re-write of the mechanics behind delivering a product from A to B, something that local stakeholders are already investing in. If you ask Mirvac’s national capital projects manager Tim Weale, self-driving disruption is a question of when, not if. “Autonomous vehicles: the technology is there, it’s on its way and it’s only a matter of time before our customer will want this in our shopping centres,” he says. “From a functionality point of view, it’s a huge game changer in our centres.” Mirvac, which owns centres in increasingly dense areas of Sydney like Birkenhead Point and Broadway, is currently undertaking an in-depth research project to determine how changes in consumer and freight transportation will impact its business in the coming years. So far, the possibilities are fairly open-ended. Weale says that everything from reducing congestion in and around centres to developing infrastructure to enable electric trucks to charge while unloading is on the horizon. He also believes in-store fulfilment will also benefit, with the possibility that driverless fleets could communicate dynamically with stock management and point-of-sale systems to drastically reduce delivery times and associated labour costs. “We’re looking at it as an urban solution, we understand it comes at a cost, but we think the partnership between ourselves and our retailers will get stronger and stronger as we need to come together,” Weale says. With around $43 billion in road freight transported annually in Australia and e-commerce having grown at a compounded annual rate of 14 per cent over the last five years, there’s a fast-growing amount of business on the line, especially if consumer expectations continue to increase. Shopping centre carparks are also set to change drastically as autonomous transport begins to penetrate consumer markets. Mirvac and Stockland are both investing in electric vehicle charging stations to cater to an expected uptake in green transport, while Weale says self-driving cars will create entirely new revenue models for the industry such as premium parking areas. A look into the future There’s a good amount of disagreement on the timelines associated with autonomous transport. While proponents like Musk say the technology already exists and is almost ready to go, regulators will take longer to give the practice a passing grade. There’s also the issue of charging stations. While there are hundreds of thousands of petrol stations in the US and Australia, there are far fewer places to charge electric vehicles – much less trucks. That said, the data indicates that freight companies in Australia are interested in getting onboard. A Teletrac Navman survey of road transport fleets released earlier this year found that 58 per cent of truck fleets in Australia see autonomous vehicles as a possible benefit to their business. That figure increases to 69 per cent among fleets with 25 trucks or more. Lower costs, safety and better vehicle utilisation emerged as key motivators, with sentiment again increasing among respondents responsible for 25 trucks or more. There’s still scepticism, with more than half either expressing no interest or concern for the capabilities of autonomous trucks – but Teletrac Navman expects minds to change when Australian road testing begins over the next few years.