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You may think it is a pipe dream, but autonomous driving obviously has extreme value when it finally works well enough.

In trucking about a quarter of the total operating costs are for labor. You would also see slight reductions in fuel and cab costs when no human is involved. About $200 billion goes towards truck drivers pay per year. Some of this labor would transform from truck driving to just truck loading/unloading (and some new software/robotic jobs), but there are still significant savings from going autonomous. That doesn't even account for less total trucks needed because all trucks would be hauling 24x7 (except when loading/unloading/deadheading). It's likely we would only need half as many total semi trucks to haul the same amount of goods once they all go autonomous. There is another around $150 billion of potential savings per year. Remember this is all just in the US.

Then there is personal transportation, and the potential for far less car ownership if there is a fleet of far cheaper autonomous taxis. It's harder to tell how much savings are there, but its likely very significant. Automotive manufacturers worldwide make over $1.5 trillion per year. There are hundreds of billions of dollars of savings there per year.

This all comes down to investor profit and consumer savings. That results in retirement accounts that keep going up, potentially thousands of dollars of savings yearly per household in reduced costs of goods and vehicle expenses, and likely increased wealth inequality if most of the financial gains go to investors (which they almost always do). Then again once you start seeing tens of millions of people out of work not because of recession but because of large scale industry displacement, this could be a catalyst for reversing course on decades of growing wealth inequality.

It's a matter of appealing to the buyer of trucks. Truckers are very passionate about what a truck should look like.

The initial reaction from the trucking community isn't good. However, I think the fleet owners will force the issue.

if the battery packs could be changed in the field, a store or warehouse could charge spare(s), and the drivers could swap them while waiting for their loads to be handled.

It takes more than 5 minutes to unload.

I did a quick google and found this thread
It tells us that 2 hours to unload is considered fast. 4 hours isn't unheard of.
If you can get enough charge for the return trip with an empty trailer in 2 hours you're good.

A short battery replacement time is needed if the trailer is detached and left there.
As pointed out here that means that it is a regular customer that you have a contract with regarding the spare trailer. Having an extra battery there wouldn't be a problem.
They already have a deal to keep the trailer there so battery management shouldn't be an issue.
Again they verify a 2-3 hour unload time. Customer pays extra for exceeding that time.

Really? My combined refrigerator-freezer unit (Siemens iQ500 series) has a maximum power rating of 90W

You're going to have to provide a citation for that, because that's ridiculously tiny. I tried looking it up on Siemens' website but all they quote is yearly power consumption:

http://www.siemens-home.bsh-gr...

This one quotes 274kWh/yr, which works out to 31W if the thing were running continuously, which isn't how refrigerators work. Besides, that's a tiny unit and nothing at all like the stuff we have in the US. However, according to this site, power consumption for refrigerators (the US kind) has fallen dramatically since the turn of the millennium, and back in the 70s/80s they used to use 4-5 times as much power, so it's possible that it's no longer necessary to supply them with a large circuit. However, they probably continue to give them a separate circuit in the kitchen so that your fridge doesn't get turned off if you blow a breaker because of your blender or toaster (which is also more likely if the fridge is running and sharing that same circuit, as toasters for instance use a ridiculous amount of power).

I did manage to find this site which quotes 150-400W, which is a rather wide range, and doesn't cite and sources or any specific model at all.

Someone in this discussion says even a little dorm refrigerator will peg a 1500W inverter on start-up, even though the running power consumption is 84W (not much less than your figure for your much-larger unit, though the dorm fridge is likely not terribly efficient unlike a top-of-the-line Euro unit). So you need to consider that too: how much power does the fridge use when the compressor starts? It's likely very high, even though it probably lasts less than a second.

So yeah, it's quite likely that a 15A 1800W dedicated circuit is still necessary for a fridge just to handle the start-up current.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=...
Second result: http://www.thetruckersreport.c...

I'm probably being Toronto, Canada centric but when I look at the number of 18 wheelers travelling between Windsor, Toronto and Montreal (520 miles a bit longer than LA to San Francisco) I would think that a hyperloop with the 401 highway, eliminating big rigs, would make a lot of sense in terms of reduced traffic, wear on the road and truck/driver costs.

According to http://www.thetruckersreport.c... it costs $1.38 USD/mile and let's assume that each truck is carrying 100,000 lbs of cargo. Along with that, there are 10k trucks travelling the route (https://canadaalive.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/highway-401/) for a total cost of $7,280k per day or more than $2.6B per year.

Going back to Musk's estimate of $6B for LA to SF, I think that the Windsor to Montreal route could be done for a similar amount (ie quite flat with no mountains and no earthquakes) which means that a 5 year ROI could be conceivable for putting a hyperloop between Windsor and Montreal (with a stop at Toronto) with the bonus of less traffic jams.

Why isn't somebody this analysis for LA to SF or other city pairs where's there's lots of commercial truck traffic to validate the hyperloop process and demonstrate a track record and demand for passengers?

Brakes usually aren't the limiting factor in slowing a vehicle down. larger brakes won't slow a vehicle down any faster - why - because usually it is a function of tire grip. Most any vehicle can lock up its brakes and skid. Larger and better brakes won't help anything to slow down faster, it will only help prevent brake fade.
  As to large trucks slowing down faster than cars - LOL. Yes trucks have larger contact patches, but they weigh oh so much more (80 tons fully loaded and 10 brakes only- not 18), and have a higher mass to contact are ratio than do cars (2.5 TONS AND 4 BRAKES) - which means longer braking distances. General quoted stopping distances for a truck are about 40% longer.
http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truck_facts.shtml #