As someone who worked there previously, I can confirm that both of your statements are correct. (This has already been publicly shared by Aurora)
There will be nobody in (most of) their trucks. There will be button pushers remotely to help it in confusing situations or failures.
They’ve already been operating the trucks near-fully autonomously with safety drivers behind the wheel and copilots in the right seat monitoring the system. They plan to remove both operators from the vehicle completely, eventually.
(Now for some of my own speculation) Someone else mentioned mother goose, they may do a similar approach, however the follow trucks don’t need to keep up with the lead truck. It would be only for the lead truck to be an early warning for unexpected road conditions (new construction for example) that is handled by the safety driver, and info sent back to other trucks quickly on how to handle it or to pull over and wait for help (default action if it gets confused). It’s impossible to require that a convoy remains together in close formation, too many scenarios can split up the trucks even on the highway.
In a mechanical failure it would pull over and wait for a rescue team. The rescue team will probably include backup drivers in case it can’t resume driving autonomously.
Also, always take timetables with a grain of salt regarding anything related to autonomous vehicles.
My guess is the situation a few years from now will be that an inconsequential percentage of the US trucking fleet will be autonomous, a smaller percentage will have no safety drivers, and the remote operators will still be 1:1 ratio, maybe 1:2 (one operator for 2 trucks), but not the desired 1:10. This tech advances very slowly.
I don’t disagree with you. There will be a rapid rate of adoption.
But how long before it’s capable enough to be adopted? We (as in anybody) don’t know. We just know that it’s been many many years and they’re still not there yet, and just because a few driverless vehicles are operating (in extremely ideal scenarios with lots of help) doesn’t mean it’s ready for the kind of hockey stick curve that the industry is looking forward to.
It will happen eventually, sure. My prediction was in regards to the OP’s question of what will things look like in a few years. I don’t think the tech will be ready for mass adoption in just a few years, neither does the author of the article linked.