BCG’s Measuring What Matters (June 2025) argues autonomous trucking could reach commercial deployment as early as 2025, but adoption is slowed by fragmented business models and a lack of comparable, “real-world” cost benchmarks. To fix this, BCG proposes a standardized Cost Per Mile (CPM) Framework that captures the full end-to-end operating cost of autonomous freight (not just labor savings vs. higher truck tech costs), including maintenance/repair, remote assistance, rescue/towing and failure costs, hub-to-hub final-mile legs, facilities, overhead, and insurance. The framework separates Key Variables (player-dependent drivers like AD kit cost, driver hours, incident rates, remote-operator ratios) from Standardized Constants to reduce “gaming,” enabling apples-to-apples ROI and viability comparisons for fleets, shippers, investors, regulators, and insurers.

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