Awesome article! This gets me so excited for the future!
Here are my thought on the subject:
Although I don't have any personal stake in the trucking industry at all, I can't wait to see what this could do to the global trucking industry long-term, granted, unfortunately, we're still pretty far away from seeing much of the benefits.
From an engineering perspective I can't wait to see how electric/autonomous semis in general, combined with other new tech, will help optimize the flow of goods through and between cities and how it'll impact the flow of traffic in a lot of areas. Not to mention what kind of impact it could have on the owners/operators and how it could hopefully improve their quality of life significantly. And we've just barely scratched the surface of what the global impacts could be.
I'm imagining a bunch of autonomous (and really quiet) semi convoys all working hard and efficiently during the night with only a few humans keeping an overall eye on them. That would be pretty awesome imho.
Overall, I can't see any real long-term downsides to adopting electric semi's. There will most certainly be some growing pains and a lot of new engineering problems to solve but that's what will make it fun and interesting.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what Musk, and his team, and even other electric semi companies can do.