GM Offers Details on Super Cruise Rollout
Widely regarded as one of the best— if not the best — hands-free driver-assist system in a still-small market, General Motors’ Super Cruise receives an upgrade this year, allowing drivers to change lanes by simply activating a turn signal.
The first models to gain the feature are the 2021 Cadillac Escalade revealed late Tuesday and Cadillac CT4 and CT5 sedans for the coming model year. The plan was always to filter Super Cruise through the GM stable, but the timeline was always hazy at best. Via GM President Mark Reuss, we now have a better idea of when semi-autonomous (and semi-autonomous only) driving will reach other models.
Speaking at an investor day event in New York, Reuss said 10 GM models will gain Super Cruise by next year, CNBC reports.
Early last year, Cadillac’s executive chief engineer, Brandon Vivian, told The Verge that the company aimed to reveal a new model with Super Cruise every six months through 2021. At the time, the engineering braintrust was busy at work to make Super Cruise more user-friendly while adding new capabilities like lane changing. Models under other GM brands, the automaker previously stated, would come along after 2021.
That’s still the case, but the numbers have changed somewhat.
By 2023, some 22 GM models will gain Super Cruise, Reuss said. He neglected to rhyme them off by name. The plan was always for Super Cruise to appear in all Cadillac models by the end of 2020; it seems GM, which debuted the system in 2017, was waiting until the enhanced version was ready before outfitting it in all existing vehicles. It had to wait, also, on the introduction of revamped models like the Escalade.
The CT4 and CT5 gained Super Cruise at launch, and will get the upgraded version later this year, along with the Escalade. The XT4, XT5, and XT6 crossovers, however, are in need of the system, and should get it come the 2021 model year (this fall).
Production of Super Cruise’s literal launch vehicle, the CT6 sedan, ceased in February.
Of course, the vehicles mentioned do not add up to 10, and they certainly don’t amount to 22, leaving a big unanswered question. Reuss would only say that the system will find its way into pickups and SUVs.
“We are rolling this out in a very big way,” he said.
[Images: General Motors]
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Luxury car drivers use their turn signals? ;) I keed, I keed!
I still don't get it. GM, Audi, BMW, whoever....this seems to be the answer to the question nobody asked. Complexity...