AI adoption is growing among teams that develop route-planning software, yet the main business risk remains unchanged: an efficient digital plan may fail when confronted with day-to-day operating conditions.
A survey by Kardinal, conducted from 1 July to 8 September 2026, found that 35% of developers, CTOs and technical leads use an AI agent daily. Another 23% use one occasionally. Claude Code was the most frequently cited tool, ahead of GitHub Copilot, while most users combine several products.
The largest reported difficulty was the gap between planned routes and real conditions, cited by 56% of respondents. Performance and computing time followed at 47%, and 43% highlighted changing business requirements. Nearly 39% said they struggle to determine whether a route is genuinely good once it has been optimised.
The choice between internal development and external technology does not appear to solve the issue. Fifty-six percent of teams have built their own planning tool, while 31% use spreadsheets and the same proportion use off-the-shelf software or an API. Almost half of the teams developing internally also use another solution. The real-world gap affects 51% of in-house teams, compared with 50% of other respondents.
Operating a proprietary system can also create a significant maintenance commitment. Among those running their own solution, 35% report regular maintenance and 18% describe the workload as heavy enough to need dedicated resources. Only 12% report almost no maintenance.
Price visibility is another purchasing factor. Sixty-five percent are strongly deterred by products without public pricing, and 26% would not evaluate them. The most common concern is that costs could rise unpredictably, cited by 41%.
The findings suggest that route-planning investment should be assessed by how well a system captures delivery windows, loading constraints, refrigerated vehicles and customer behaviour—not simply by the sophistication of its optimisation engine.
A multilingual professional experienced in Europe, Canada, and China, Herbert has developed invaluable networks in the automotive and energy industries. He has led high-profile projects involving ENBW, Mercedes-Benz Group, Siemens Group, and the Fraunhofer Institute.