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I have one vehicular answer for our OP and that is our old friend the automated manual gearbox, mated to engines getting (as in cars) progressively smaller with various states of turbocharging to get the required 10bhp per ton figure.
Which if you think about it is simply ridiculous, 10bhp per ton, but that figure is only once the engine is up to peak torque its a case of getting the thing moving first of all.
I refer me learned fiends back to the 80's when weights were 38 tons max and the typical engine of the time was the good old Cummins, a 14 litre lump that gave max torque at a mere 1100 rpm and would pull like a train from 5/600 rpm, IIRC it gave 90% of its considerable peak torque from 800rpm, i assure you there was no trouble pulling out from junctions with that beasty, many a good car could struggle to keep up with the thing empty, and if the limiter wasn't engaged would struggle to stay with the thing at all empty or loaded.
Now in our fleet we have 11 litre engines, boosted to give an alleged 440hp (yeah right), but when we are loaded we are near enough 44 tons at all times, then we have the default automated manual gearbox from hell, there are not enough swear words in all the languages of the world to adequately describe this gearbox from hell.
Some fitments you still have some form of manual control of the gearbox, now whether the driver is skilled (or bothered) enough to learn the box to enable better getaways is debatable because just as in most of Britain my industry has been dumbed down to lowest common denominator level too, poorly paid in the main, skills and commitment of no interest to the majority of employers who just want cheap as.
Then of course we have road design, the new default is to make roundabouts blind, have you noticed this?, make a roundabout then either put fencing or shrubbery on the thing so the lorry driver can't see aproaching traffic and plan their pull out, you want to try getting an 11 or 12 litre automated manual moving quickly before the next cloned eurobox car comes screaming round the blind corner at 50+ mph, the gearbox will usually have to make at least 3 changes before you are up to 15mph.
The elephant in the room is the country is overfull with people with more arriving every day, the problems we are now having in all parts of our lives are only going to get worse, far worse, the enjoyable days of motoring (and life in general) of the 60's through to the 80/90's are over, they will never return, we will just have to rub along together.
Don't worry though, the autonomous vehicle isn;t far away for all of us, whether the new utopia they promise will be quite the vision of wonder they try to sell is another thing altogther.
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