Super Cruise While Towing on Way to GM Trucks
As part of an announcement that the 2022 GMC Sierra would receive GM’s Super Cruise “hands-free driving-assistance” system (GM’s phrasing, not ours), GM confirmed that the system will work while towing and trailering.
The Sierra won’t be the only GM product getting Super Cruise. The system is already available on some Cadillacs, the Chevrolet Bolt EUV, and a smattering of other GM products, and it’s now set to expand to the Sierra, the Chevrolet Silverado, the upcoming GMC Hummer EV pickup, and more Cadillac models.
Your author has not yet had a chance to use the system, so I can’t tell you if it’s good or not based on first-hand experience, but by all accounts, it does seem to work fairly well. As a reminder, Super Cruise only works on certain roads and in certain conditions.
Even without experience with the system, we’d imagine that it could make trailering easier. We’re also wondering how, if it all, it integrates with GM’s other tow/trailer assist features that we’ve tested, such as the camera system.
This news could be cause for long-haul, um, haulers to rejoice.
[Image: GM]
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“hands-free driving-assistance” while towing. What could go wrong? You'd think that GM would have learned something from reports of all of those Tesla crashes.
More hood!! Who needs to see the road any any closer than 100 yards/meters ahead? This body styling looks to be the equivalent of basically blocking off the lower half of the windshield of any normal vehicle. But then maybe that is what the automated driving is compensating for.
‘“You’d think that GM would have learned something from reports of all of those Tesla crashes.” Your joking right? GM doesn’t learn from their own mistakes why in a million years would they learn from someone else’s.
If this works, and maybe it'll be a while to work the bugs out, this could be a real asset for towing. If you've ever towed you know that even in light winds there is always some tail-wagging-the-dog going on. It's worse in gusty conditions. It's also worse when you have a tow vehicle that is slightly lower in capacity than it should be. I'm not talking tow rating or tongue weight, but you could theoretically tow a huge "lightweight" trailer behind a F150. It's within the tow rating and tongue weight but you have a massive sail behind you that wants to go with the wind. When towing a trailer there is going to be more steering input than without a trailer. You're always correcting for even light winds. (I should add that I'm talking about travel trailers here. You could easily tow something low and heavy - say a low dump trailer with gravel - and not worry much about wind.) If Super Cruise was able to deal with these conditions before the driver could react that would be a great thing. This may not be a perfect analogy, but some aircraft, mostly in fighters, they are designed to be inherently unstable. This gives them the ability to maneuver more quickly than an inherently stable aircraft. But to make it flyable it's all about the software behind the controls. Then again, I can see a downside. Someone gets a F150 and hooks onto a 35' trailer and heads down the road and feels confident - until they get a strong gust sideways and flip over.