General Motors partially dropped the curtain on its plans for vehicle autonomy. Mark Reuss, GM’s chief of product development, announced that Cadillac’s Super Cruise driver assistance suite would be available for all Cadillac models in 2020, according to Automotive News. Other GM brands will get Super Cruise later, Reuss said, without specifying brands or rollout model years.
Earlier this year, Cadillac officials confirmed the Super Cruise autonomous system would be added to the new XT4 eventually, but said it would not be when the new small SUV launches later this year.
Cadillac first offered the Super Cruise hands-free, self-driving suite option on flagship 2018 CTS sedans manufactured after September 5, 2017. The system employs cameras, radar, lidar mapping, GPS, and driver attention monitors.
Super Cruise requires drivers to pay attention while using the system, which monitors driver attention with proprietary head-tracking software. If the tracking system detects the driver’s eyes are not on the road, it alerts the driver to pay attention or to take over control of the vehicle.
Driver-assistance components in the Super Cruise suite include lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control. General Motors engineers used precise lidar mapping technology to scan more than 130,000 miles of highways in the U.S. and Canada. The map scanning, which GM claims is accurate with 5 centimeters (about 2 inches), lets drivers use Super Cruise on those previously mapped freeways without keeping their hands on the steering wheel.
Noting that state and local laws may require drivers’ hands on steering wheels at all times, Cadillac instructs drivers only to remove their hands from the steering wheel when Super Cruise is engaged, when it’s safe to do so, and when permitted by state and local laws.
When Cadillac introduced Super Cruise the company held an event in which drivers traveled from New York City to Los Angeles hands-free using the autonomous suite.
At the Intelligent Transportation Society conference on Wednesday, Reuss also announced that a high-volume Cadillac crossover (the XT4 would be a good guess) would have vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications by 2023. V2X is an upgrade to V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communications, first introduced in 2017 for CTS sedans.
V2V communicates data on vehicle position, direction and speed among other vehicles equipped with the same technology. V2X adds information on hazardous road condition, traffic lights, work zones, and potential crash threats, Automotive News reported. Like Super Cruise, V2X will spread across GM lines following the Cadillac debut, but the company has not announced availability dates.
