- general motors' new and yet-to-be-officially-named ultra cruise would bring super cruise’s hands-off driver assistance technology to city driving.
- gm hasn't shared a launch date for the feature or said which vehicles will be equipped.
- super cruise was launched on the 2018 cadillac ct6 and will soon be expanded to other vehicles in the gm lineup.
gm’s super cruise hands-off driver-assistance system will eventually be able to navigate city streets with no driver input. that's according to doug parks, gm executive vice president of global product development. during a phone conversation today at citi's 2020 car of the future symposium, parks said that the system was developed with the internal code name ultra cruise.
"ultra cruise's domain would essentially be all driving, all the time," parks said. "ultra cruise would be all the super cruise, plus neighborhoods, cities, subdivisions." parks didn't announce a timeline for when this new version of super cruise would be added to new vehicles.
there is the potential that ultra cruise could be the automaker's play for self-driving in passenger cars. "we're not saying ultra cruise will be fully autonomous 100 percent of the time, although that could be one of the endgames for ultra cruise," parks said. that would place the upcoming driver-assist system in competition with tesla's full self-driving feature that will eventually add autonomous driving to tesla vehicles.
when contacted, gm issued the following statement:
"over the years, general motors has added new capabilities to super cruise, the industry’s first true hands-free driver assistance system for compatible highways and we’ll continue to do that while expanding the technology across our vehicle portfolio. at the same time, we have teams looking at how we can expand the capabilities to more scenarios. we do not have a name or anything specific to announce today, but stay tuned."
super cruise was introduced in 2017 on the 2018 cadillac ct6. the system is a highway-only hands-off driver-assist system. to make sure the driver pays attention to the road while not holding the wheel, a camera is mounted on the steering column t0 monitor the driver. unlike tesla's autopilot, the system is geofenced to work only on roads that gm and its partners have mapped with lidar. currently there are over 200,000 miles of supported roads in north america.
gm has already announced that super cruise will expand beyond the cadillac brand and that new vehicles with the feature on the automaker's upcoming vehicle intelligent platform (vip). on the platform, super cruise will be able to change lanes, and parks announced that it will also handle freeway interchanges.