The 6-metre distance between cars is probably to strongly discourage other drivers from attempting to cut in, which would banjax their laser finders and other stuff.
With the lead truck sending instructions, this is a client-server setup, compared to google's independent peer-to-peer approach. It's not self-driving, it's remote-control of a train of cars behind you. The volvo experiment seems much less ambitious than google's, and might be more successful in the narrow case of long-distance motorway travel. But I don't see how to generalise it to everyday driving.
Add an ad-hoc mesh network to google's cars and anything could become possible.
With the lead truck sending instructions, this is a client-server setup, compared to google's independent peer-to-peer approach. It's not self-driving, it's remote-control of a train of cars behind you. The volvo experiment seems much less ambitious than google's, and might be more successful in the narrow case of long-distance motorway travel. But I don't see how to generalise it to everyday driving.
Add an ad-hoc mesh network to google's cars and anything could become possible.