Cadillac's Super Cruise is Super Late, Takes Aim at Autopilot

by Corey Lewis

Published: April 10th, 2017

cadillac s super cruise is super late takes aim at autopilot

Cadillac announced its autonomous driving system Super Cruise is ready and will be available this fall. The system, designed to compete directly with Tesla’s Autopilot, will first appear on the Cadillac CT6.

It doesn’t sound like GM has pulled any punches. Super Cruise is touting some serious features.

Cadillac has been road testing this technology since early 2012. At that time, fully automated steering, lane-centering, and braking were promised for highway use under certain conditions. Details were scarce then, but the press release indicated Super Cruise could be ready by mid-decade.

Cadillac almost made its deadline, sort of.

Cadillac today released details on this production-ready version of Super Cruise, and Cadillac head Johan de Nysschen had some things to say:

Cadillac’s philosophy is to elevate driving. Super Cruise enables safe, simple hands-free driving for the highway.

The first claim is a big one, citing Super Cruise as “the industry’s first true hands-free driving technology.”

Utilizing a system of cameras, sensors, and mapping, drivers will be able to remove their hands from the wheel during highway driving. But don’t get too many ideas, as there’s a driver attention system on board. To make sure there are no in-car shenanigans (or climbing into the back seat like in earlier Autopilot videos), the CT6 has a camera monitoring the driver to ensure their attention remains on the road and their ass remains in the seat. The camera resides on top of the dashboard and uses infrared lights to monitor driver head position to see where the driver is looking. If the driver is wandering in mind or spirit, the CT6 pulls some Knight Rider tricks.

An escalating series of events will befall the attention-deficit driver, starting with a light bar on the steering wheel and indicator lights within the cluster. The second round will trigger audible alerts — Michael, I’m warning you! — and activate the Safety Alert Seat ~~which ejects the driver from the car~~, which vibrates even more thoroughly than your latest text message.

But maybe those warnings didn’t work, so it’s time for stage three. When the CT6 has had enough of your tomfoolery or heart attacks, Super Cruise can bring the car to a halt, while simultaneously using OnStar to contact the appropriate authorities for help when necessary.

Built into Super Cruise is a precision LIDAR system, which Cadillac says is an industry first. The scanned map database works with real-time data from the cameras and GPS sensors in the car, governing use of the system. All inputs combine to determine the right road conditions to allow Super Cruise’s activation. The system can be used only on divided highways with defined on and off ramps. City streets, intersections, and rural roads are a no-go at this time.

Impressively, General Motors hired engineers to create the LIDAR map specifically for the Super Cruise system, who then plotted every mile of limited-access highway in the United States and Canada. The GPS in the car is an advanced one, with a claim of four to eight times more precision than regular GPS.

Chief engineer on Super Cruise Barry Walkup would seem to have bigger plans for future usage, per his statement buried at the bottom of the press release.

While it is technically possible for the technology to drive hands-free on other kinds of streets and roads, we feel strongly that this targeted approach is the best to build consumer and regulatory confidence and enthusiasm for advanced mobility.

Full autonomy is coming, citizens. Be patient.

#AutonomousDriving #Autopilot #Cadillac #CT6 #GeneralMotors #SuperCruise #Technology #Tesla

Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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5 of 44 comments

V-Strom rider on Apr 10, 2017

So remind me again - what's the point of a system that let's you stop driving but expects you to concentrate as if you are driving? Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see the benefit for the consumer - you might as well just drive. When I can get into the passenger seat and go for a ride, then I'll see the benefit of a genuinely autonomous system.

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- Arach on Apr 11, 2017
  
  LOL... yes. I have smartcruise and I love it. just yesterday I was in stop and go traffic crawling at about 4 MPH, and I was able to just engage it and play on my phone. I kind of view that as the positive, to stop paying attention doing mondane tasks. The problem is the "expect you to concentrate". Its impossible. I was just about pro-death-penalty-for-people-who-text-and-drive. Then I got smart cruise and learned to trust it so much I don't have any qualms about looking away or paying less attention, and I've really began to trust the tech. Thats also what means I'm going to die in a fiery crash in about 3 months, as that's how it goes... thats kind of the problem. No one is going to be concentrating and paying attention. You can't. Once you trust something, you give up responsibility to it. You know you shouldn't, but you do. Think about the occasional time your alarm clock fails- your late and lost. We've done that at work. We create a semi-automated system where a person has to check and verify that there's no errors. Every error seems to get missed, when the person caught all of the when it was full manual. Once again, I'll tell you that ignoring the road with smart cruise is stupid. I would have told you it was stupid every day of my life... and I do it. I lolligag at whatever I'm driving by, look at the people next to me, and at very slow speeds, even check my phone. I have complete trust my car will stop if the car in front of me stops, and go when they go. Its STUPID. I know that. Why do I do it? I can't help myself. I've driven 30k miles, which is probably 1000 hours or so, and every time its worked perfectly... so why wouldn't it work perfectly for 10 seconds while I glance at something?? I mean odds are it will. 99.99% of the time it will work fine. The problem is the .01% chance I die in a fiery crash. I was a great driver. I'm not anymore. I regret buying such a high-tech car. I'm a firm believer of mid-level autonomy failing. It just goes against everything we do as humans. Side note, 2006 Vstrom 1000 here... and a stromtrooper... ;)
  
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- V-Strom rider on Apr 11, 2017
  
  @arach All true - the technology becomes a crutch and when it fails we can't walk! 2015 V-Strom 650 (my second Wee-Strom) on which I did a ten week 21,485km (c13,500 mile) solo round Australia ride last year. Brilliant machine and what an experience!
  
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Wodehouse on Apr 11, 2017

I love that this is named "Super Cruise" In fact, I'd love it if Cadillac would ditch the "CT6" part (see how lame it sounds next to "Super Cruise"?) altogether and call this meh-looking car Super Cruise, though, I suppose Chevy may have something to say about that.

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- Carguy67 on Apr 11, 2017
  
  "Super Cruise" means one thing and one thing only: The ability to fly at supersonic speed without afterburners. Does this Caddy even have afterburners?
  
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