When wars in Iran threaten oil routes, and Saudi Aramco jacks up prices because it can, the weakness of global freight becomes impossible to ignore. The latest tensions tied to Iran and the Strait of Hormuz have exposed, again, how fragile it is to move food, medicine, fuel, industrial goods and consumer products through a logistics system still built around diesel.

A single chokepoint can raise prices across continents. A single delay or boat of Houthi pirates attempting to blow up an oil tanker ripples from port to warehouse to supermarket shelf. The lesson is no longer abstract. Freight needs to become more electric, more local, more automated, more resilient and, above all, safer. And all that needs to be linked to battery storage microgrids and renewable energy produced close to home. My goal is to see the share price of Saudi Aramco sink.

The symbol most people recognize is the Tesla Semi, Tesla’s battery-electric Class 8 truck which we wrote about more than 5 years ago. Tesla says the Semi can travel up to 500 miles on a charge, use about 1.7 kWh per mile, and recover up to 70% of range in 30 minutes with its 1 MW charging system. Those are no longer vague concept-car numbers. They are logistics numbers that matter because freight does not need novelty: it needs predictable routes, lower operating costs, better energy security and fewer people dying on the road.

But Tesla is only one part of the story. The more interesting shift is that long-haul trucking is now splitting into two serious zero-emission paths: battery-electric for predictable corridors and depot-based logistics, and hydrogen fuel cell for longer ranges, faster refueling and heavier-duty freight where batteries may still be too limiting.

Why electric trucks are finally becoming real

Battery-electric trucks make the most sense where routes are repetitive and tightly managed: ports to warehouses, regional distribution centers, industrial parks, airport freight corridors and retail supply loops. These trucks can charge during planned dwell times, brake regeneratively in traffic and increasingly move as part of coordinated fleets rather than as isolated machines.

This is where Green Prophet’s old fascination with road trains starts to look less eccentric and more prescient. The old Australian road train was about linking trailers together for remote hauling. The new version is software-driven and possibly fueled by green hydrogen: platooned electric trucks traveling in synchronized formation to reduce aerodynamic drag, save energy and move freight more efficiently between hubs.

Research published in 2025 suggests electric truck platooning can reduce total operating costs when charging, routing and convoy formation are optimized together. That may sound technical, but it points to something simple: the next road train is not a dusty outback oddity. It is a digitally managed freight system.

Companies like Einride are already operating electric and autonomous freight systems in Europe and the United States. Volvo Trucks, Daimler Truck, PACCAR and others are all pushing battery-electric heavy-duty platforms into real-world operations. The market is still young, but it is no longer imaginary.

Where hydrogen enters the picture

If battery-electric trucks are best suited to fixed and repeatable corridors, hydrogen fuel cell trucks are being positioned for the stretches where battery weight, charging time and infrastructure become harder to manage. Think Canada, inner states in the US and Australia. Even wide parts of the Middle East desert where the price of oil costs less than water. This is where the argument gets serious.

Daimler Truck says its new Mercedes-Benz NextGenH2 Truck will enter small-series production from the end of 2026, with 100 trucks planned for customer operations. Daimler says the liquid hydrogen truck is designed for ranges well over 800 miles on a single fill and uses components shared with its battery-electric eActros 600, including safety systems and digital cockpit architecture. That matters because it suggests the future may not be electric or hydrogen, but electric and hydrogen depending on route logic.

That same dual-path logic is why truckmakers are hedging across both technologies. Nikola, despite its damaged reputation and corporate instability, has still pushed hydrogen fuel cell trucks into commercial trials. The technology itself should not be dismissed because one company handled it badly. Hydrogen trucks offer compelling advantages where time-sensitive freight, high utilization and diesel-like refueling rhythms still matter.

There is a catch, of course. Hydrogen is only as clean as the way it is made. If it comes from fossil gas without meaningful carbon capture, the climate case weakens. If it comes from renewable electrolysis, the case improves dramatically. The same critique applies to battery-electric trucks. They are only as green as the grid charging them. If fossil fuels are running the battery charging stations, the whole point becomes ridiculous. We need an all-systems effort here. But even when it’s not green, electric drivetrains and fuel cells shift freight away from combustion at the point of use, which is still a major health and air quality gain for the roads cities around them.

Why safety may be the strongest argument of all

This is not only a climate story. It is a safety story, and trucking badly needs one. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, there were about 503,000 police-reported crashes involving large trucks in the United States in 2022, including 5,279 fatal crashes. The agency also notes that 82% of fatalities in fatal large-truck crashes were not occupants of the large truck. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has repeatedly shown that large trucks create disproportionate danger for people in smaller vehicles.

That is the context in which electric and hydrogen trucks need to be judged. Not against some fantasy of perfect roads, but against the current freight system, which still depends too heavily on fatigue, weak oversight, inconsistent training and vehicles operating under deadline pressure.

Advanced safety systems are already proving useful. IIHS has reported that forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking reduce rear-end crash rates for large trucks. These are not distant future gains. They are available gains. Battery-electric and hydrogen trucks are both well positioned to integrate these systems more deeply because they are increasingly software-first platforms. Their cameras, sensors, telemetry, braking logic and route controls can be managed at fleet level rather than left to the limits of human judgment alone.

That is where the promise lies. A truck that is digitally supervised from depot to destination is harder to fake, easier to monitor and easier to discipline. Its speed, route, braking behavior, maintenance events and charging or fueling cycles can all be tracked. It is not a moral solution to human failure, but it is a technical one, and freight needs more of that.

The dirty secret of freight is not just diesel

There is another reason the trucking sector is ripe for change: too much of it is held together with bad labor conditions, training shortcuts and dangerous corner-cutting. Canada has become a cautionary example. Ontario authorities suspended truckers’ licences after uncovering dishonest testing and training practices, according to TruckNews. Alberta also shut down unsafe truck driver training schools and targeted carriers linked to poor safety practices, again reported by TruckNews. A few years ago, a trucker from India killed an entire hockey team when he was driving on a suspended license from infractions. He should not have been on the road. But lack of government oversight with unsustainable immigration goals have put Canadian roads at risk. Make it electric!

This is where the public conversation often goes off the rails. The issue is not “foreign drivers” as a lazy culture-war talking point. The issue is licensing integrity, labor exploitation, poor oversight and freight systems that reward cost-cutting until people die. If electric and hydrogen trucks are managed through better software, better route discipline and better oversight, they can help reduce those failure points. They will not erase human corruption, but they can make dangerous operations more visible and easier to regulate.

The next road train may move at night

One of the least discussed advantages of electric and hydrogen freight is when it can move. The future of long-haul logistics is not just about propulsion. It is about timing of the drive.

Night freight may become one of the biggest advantages of automated and electrified trucking. Roads are less congested at night. Temperatures are lower. Delivery windows are easier to manage. Noise is lower with electric drivetrains. Human fatigue has always made night trucking dangerous, but digitally managed freight corridors, better sensors, automatic braking and lane support change that equation. A future fleet of trucks moving quietly between depots after midnight may turn out to be one of the safest ways to keep cities and supply chains functioning.

This is also where autonomy enters the picture. Companies like Aurora are already running driverless freight routes in Texas and have expanded their network as confidence in the systems grows. That does not mean human drivers disappear tomorrow, and it certainly does not mean the technology is risk-free. But it does suggest that the future freight vehicle may be less like a cowboy truck and more like a rolling logistics node, with the human gradually shifting from driver to supervisor.

The Middle East should care more than most

For the Gulf and other regions exposed to oil-route instability, this transition is not just environmental. It is strategic. Green Prophet recently reported how Etihad Rail is using solar power at a freight terminal, a small but important signal that logistics is beginning to decouple from diesel. Rail, electric trucking, hydrogen corridors and distributed renewable energy can begin to work together as one freight architecture.

That is the real post-oil freight future. Not a single silver bullet, but a layered system: electric trucks on predictable routes, hydrogen trucks on heavier and longer hauls, autonomous convoying where it makes sense, rail where possible, and maybe even tunnels where cities become too congested to keep pretending surface freight is enough.

That last idea sounds absurd until you look at what Elon Musk’s Boring Company is trying to do. Green Prophet recently covered its proposed Dubai Loop. Most of the discussion focuses on passenger transport, but the freight implications may be more important. Underground logistics corridors for high-value goods, airport freight, port distribution and urban delivery are no longer science fiction. They are expensive, yes, but so are crashes, congestion, diesel pollution, road wear and lost time.

What could go wrong

There are real pitfalls and they should not be brushed aside.

Charging infrastructure is still thin for heavy trucks. Hydrogen refueling infrastructure is even thinner. Grid readiness is uneven. Green hydrogen is still expensive. Battery weight remains a payload issue. Autonomous regulation is inconsistent across jurisdictions. Public trust can collapse after a single bad crash.

And then there are jobs. Better electric and hydrogen logistics will almost certainly mean fewer traditional long-haul driving jobs over time, especially on repetitive corridor freight. Some of those jobs will shift into fleet management, charging and fueling infrastructure, maintenance, software operations and remote supervision. Some will not. Governments and unions should be preparing for that reality now, not pretending it will sort itself out.

The real promise

The real promise of electric and hydrogen long-haul trucks is not that they are trendy. It is that they make freight less stupid.

They offer a path away from a system built on diesel dependency, poor air quality, avoidable crashes, labor strain and geopolitical fragility. They will not replace every truck overnight. They do not need to. Freight changes corridor by corridor, depot by depot, terminal by terminal. That is how this transition will happen too.

The old diesel model gave us pollution, fatigue, noise, vulnerability and too many deaths on the road. The next freight era should be quieter, cleaner, more disciplined and harder to destabilize. Battery-electric and hydrogen trucks are not a fantasy anymore. They are beginning to look like the most practical answer we have.

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Israel is celebrating about the $15 billion buyout of its startup Mobileye to Intel for driverless cars and buses, and Dubai is making its own inroads in driverless tech – from the future. This July the city will launch a fleet of flying taxis powered by electricity. The made-in-China driverless drones — called Ehang 184 will pick up passengers this summer.

“The 184 provides a viable solution to the many challenges the transportation industry faces in a safe and energy-efficient way,” said Ehang founder and CEO Huazhi Hu.

By 2030 Dubai wants one-quarter of all its journeys made by self-driving vehicles.

“This project supports Dubai’s government’s direction to become the smartest city in the world,” said H.E. Mattar Al Tayer, director general of RTA, the Dubai transportation authority.

Passengers pick where they want to go inside the vehicle, using a smart screen. The flying drone takes care of the rest.

The name 184 stands for one person, 8 propellers, 4 arms, and the passenger drone can cruise at about 80 miles an hour. All flights will be monitored by ground control.

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Intel’s massive buyout of Israel’s driverless car innovator and electronic sensor company Mobileye may finally give the driverless car concept the attention it so well deserves. Intel, whose computer chips and semiconductor technology is found in nearly every personal computer, appears now to be very serious about being involved in the driverless car concept.

Prior to the March 13 press releases by both Mobileye and Intel Corp, experiments in driverless car technology have been carried out by companies such as Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors, Uber’ self-driving taxi tests, and by software search engine giant Google.

So far, experiments using driverless car technologies have had mixed results, with test cars “struggling” when approaching bridges and when dealing with complex road work and environmental challenges.

Mobileye, an advanced technologies company based in Israel, was founded in 1999 with the aim to develop what it refers to as ‘vision-safety technology’ to make cars and roads safer, reduce traffic congestion and save lives. Mobileye helped develop devices to enable cars to “sense” approaching obstacles like other vehicles, pedestrians; and even walls and other obstacles in parking lots.

This resulted in what is now known as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)  that are now
commonplace in many new cars. These systems have been used for years in taxis in Israel.

As stated by Ziv Aviram, CEO and co-founder of Mobileye: “Drivers are responsible for 93 percent of road accidents. We have an epidemic of the modern world, and in some sense, we’ve become indifferent. There is a remedy that will save a million and a half lives and 50 million injuries a year, and therefore the autonomous car trend has caught on and can’t be stopped. It won’t be stopped.”

Once installed, Mobileye’s vision sensors literally view the road ahead and warns the driver in real-time of approaching road dangers.

So why would a computer chip giant like Intel want to invest so much money, $15.3 Billion, in a company like Mobileye? The answer: Intel wants to be a partner and major game player in the development of driverless cars. The future of this technology appears to be well worth such a large investment from Intel’s point of view. There is also much more at stake than only having cars with artificial intelligence sophisticated enough to drive themselves.

Mobileye’s advanced vision systems are already in use in many late model cars today. This will hopefully help reduce the number of road accidents on major streets and highways. These vision systems alone gave Mobileye a total revenue of more than $358 Million in 2016; a gain of over 47% over the previous year.

With Intel and Mobileye joining forces in such a big way, it shouldn’t long before the driverless car concept will be commonplace in large American, European and Asian cities; especially with taxi companies like Uber.

Read more about self-driving cars and electric car technology:
Google goes for awesome driverless car concept
Driverless Tesla electric car will test run on Israel’s Better Place grid
Will GM make electric cars the right way?

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After making billions on online advertising Google execs are now putting some money into companies of their dreams. The latest – the Google driverless car concept.

“Look Ma, no hands!”

This time-worn expression involving steering a car without using one’s hands has been around a while. More recently, automotive companies like Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors are teaming up with technology innovators like Israel based Mobileye  to develop a totally different concept of literally  “hands free” car driving.

Tesla, which manufactures high-priced electric sports cars and salons is  planning to use Israel’s Better Place electric car infrastructure network to test models fitted with Mobileye’s  driverless car navigation system.

Apparently, the race is now on as to who will be able to develop the best driverless car technology that will enable people to  ride in vehicles that literally navigate and drive themselves on city streets and highways. Tesla and Mobileye are not the only companies working on the driverless car concept.

Google, the software media giant that is now a household name in the internet world, has  now jumped into to the fray and is outfitting Toyota Lexus SUV cars with its own driverless steering version that is now being test driven on  streets and roads in California and around the states. 

Google’s  driverless concept could be closer to true driverless traveling, than Mobileye’s.

Program director Chris Urmson (see photo)  says that “thanks to software upgrades, the self-driving car can now detect hundreds of distinct objects simultaneously—pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, or a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn.”

Taking this in mind, Google says cars using their software will one day be able to easily navigate streets New York City as driverless technologies improve.

Google’s driverless concept involves the incorporation of various software and video cameras as seen in the above illustration. The “Google car” is noted in red. Purple lines and boxes represent other cars on street, while red ones represent cyclists. Pedestrians are shown as yellow.  Street signs and signals look like they normally would.

According to an article in the UK Daily Mail a spinning “silver bucket” on top of a self-driving car contains 64 lasers that collect three-dimensional information in all directions, while a radar sensor bounces waves off every  object within about 500 feet.

There’s also a camera that looks through the windshield and reads everything from traffic signals to street signs.  Specially programed software “watches” what all of these different objects are doing at any given moment. It reacts to their movements and adjusts the driving plan accordingly.  A GPS device assists in planning the route the car will take.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s much more complicated than you might think, as video cameras have to identify the various hazards, including pedestrians crossing the street, and relays the data back to the software program.

Dmitri Dolgov from Google’s self-driving car team was quoted as  saying: “The car is capable of a lot of things, but unless it’s absolutely sure that it can handle the situation well, it will err on the conservative side.”

Erring, could obviously result in a serious and possibly fatal accident. If all goes well, Google hopes to have the driverless car program “on the road” by 2017.

A driverless car concept is just one of many things currently being innovated that involves the use of “robotics” or artificial  intelligence to perform tasks that human beings would normally do.

Google’s driverless team has up to now logged more than 700,000 accident-free miles (1.1 million km)  in various test locations in the USA. Not bad for “look Ma, no hands!”

Read more on the driverless car driving concept:

“Driverless” Tesla electric car will test run on Israel’s Better Place grid

Driverless car partnership emerges between Tesla and Israel’s Mobileye

Photo illustration of Google driverless car concept

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Consider what it takes for a car to drive down the road without input from a driver: it has to be able to change lanes, stay in the center of its own lane, preferably avoiding crashing into pedestrians or other objects , and it needs to stop at traffic lights.

Artificial vision safety systems like those for which Mobileye is known are essential to the success of automated vehicles. Cameras located on different parts of the car synchronize with the vehicle’s navigation system to automatically perform the various functions that the driver would normally take care of.

In the case of a driverless vehicle that the Israeli company and Tesla are said to be developing together, there will be five cameras – two in front, one in the back, and one on either side of the car, according to TheMarker and Ha’aretz.

Their system, which has already been tested on cars made by Opel, Audi, Toyota and Nissan, will allow vehicles to cross intersections not moderated with traffic lights and switch lanes on busy roads without hitting neighboring cars.

But it won’t allow drivers to tune out and take a nap, says Mobileye Founder Prof. Amnon Shashua.

“This is not automatic driving in which the driver types an address and goes to sleep,” Shashua told TheMarker. “The system allows control to be given to it for a limited period. You can read a text message or change the radio station and give temporary control to the cameras.”

Until now, Tesla’s appearance in the Middle East has been limited – apart from a roadster spotting in Dubai, but this budding partnership suggests that the EV and driverless vehicle market could potentially explode in the region.

It’s also interesting to note that a technology developed in Israel should feature so ubiquitously, but relatively silently, in driverless vehicles produced by multiple automakers.

:: Ha’aretz

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