Cadillac Changes Its Super Cruise Strategy, Commences Media Campaign Prior to Launch
Setbacks notwithstanding, we’ve been eagerly anticipating Cadillac’s entry into the world of semi-autonomous driving with its Super Cruise system, developed to help reinforce the automaker’s position as top-tier luxury brand. After all, vehicular opulence is now deeply embedded with technological achievement and few things shout “I’ve arrived” like a car that can chauffeur you around.
However, Cadillac is changing its implementation strategy, making Super Cruise standard on the highest trimmed CT6 — instead of leaving it as a pricy optional extra. It’s also launching an advertising campaign to whet the public’s appetite, with the first of its “Let Go” TV spots appearing on MTV’s Video Music Awards over the weekend.
Since I’m not a 16-year-old, I wasn’t watching the VMAs. But the digital wonderland in we currently exist made the 30-second spot easy enough to find. It’s boilerplate automotive marketing nonsense — conflating a change in lifestyle with the purchase of a specific type of car.
The majority of it focuses on individuals achieving important lifelong goals with unrelated clips of a gentleman enjoying hands-free driving.
In fairness, other early ads in the campaign are much easier to swallow. There’s one where the driver uses Super Cruise to engage in sign-language with his passenger — utilizing the technology in a way I had not previously considered. But how good or bad the commercials were don’t really matter as much as the system itself.
For the most part, is seems great and baking it into plusher versions of the 2018 CT6 sounds like a fine idea. Previously, the company had suggested it would only offer the hands-off highway tech as a $2,500 option. But Automotive News reported Monday that the company has changed those plans.
A Cadillac spokesman explained the automaker is making Super Cruise a standard feature on the CT6 Platinum, which carried an initial starting price of $85,290. The feature remains an optional extra on the Premium Luxury trim. Adjusted pricing will be announced closer to the vehicles’ arrival in dealerships — part of a interim model-year addition that Cadillac calls “2018i.”
As for what the safety tech suite can actually do, Cadillac is promising a genuine hands-free highway driving experience —with literally handful of important exceptions. Super Cruise is supposedly capable of allowing you to move along the expressway in a single lane without ever having to touch the wheel.
However, you do need to regain control for passing, entering, and exiting. You also can’t play on your phone, take a nap, or crack a book. The system has sensors that monitor eye movement and won’t work if you stop paying attention to the road ahead. It may have one of the most advanced GPS systems ever installed in a motor vehicle (and LIDAR specifically designed for the CT6), but General Motors doesn’t feel comfortable enough to allow you to let your guard down entirely.
If you do, the car requests that you regain control before bringing itself to a gradual stop. “It’s been very carefully thought out from a safety standpoint,” GM product chief Mark Reuss told reporters in Detroit. “If you think about this from a pure safety standpoint, it’s really a driver load reduction.”
A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.
More by Matt Posky
Comments
Join the conversation
V4-6-8 4100 Northstarrr 3.0 Ellesmere Port V6 Self immolating 2.0T What could possibly go wrong with Super Cruise? :D Christ on a bike just make a car that doesn't suck for once this millennium.
They should have left it as an option, then built ALL of them WITH the option. Well, at least for the first two model years.