Truck platooning is a technology allowing trucks to travel in convoy formations using wireless communications and advanced driver assistance systems. This technology is expected to increase road safety and capacity, and to decrease fuel consumption and GHG emissions; in other words, it comes with financial benefits and positive externalities. The academic literature strongly suggests this technology to be soon available. However, sound economic studies are lacking. In most of the papers or reports discussing the financial or socio-economic value of platooning, market uptake is taken for granted, or computed with extremely simplified, ad hoc models, missing core micro-economic mechanisms. However, the value of platooning depends very directly on market uptake. This paper submits a micro-economic, dynamic model of platooning market uptake which aims at addressing some of the most critical gaps in the current literature. First, platooning is a coordination problem: freight carriers must organize truck trips so as to form platoons, which they will only do if there is a significant financial benefit. Second, platooning is an equipment problem: freight carriers will buy platooning-enabled trucks if and only if the benefits are expected to be higher than the cost. In other words, this is a bi-level economic problem where one of the levels exhibits network externalities. Also, there is strong inertia in the truck market as trucks are long lived assets. This is accounted for in the model, which models the truck market as a succession of generations. The model allows to test a wide variety of assumptions regarding the market uptake of platooning. It allows for a correct calculation of costs and benefits, including a correct account of how much time trucks spend in platoons, the probability of platoon formation, and the overall cost-benefit balance for carriers. A flexible computer program has been developped to conduct simulations assessing the impact of each of the economic and technical parameters of interest. The two main conclusions are that, first, due to the positive feedback loop of network externalities, market uptake is extremely sensitive to the economic assumptions; second, due to the equipment and coordination costs induced by platooning, the overall financial benefits for carriers are typically much lower than the theoretical benefits for trucks in platoons
