Cadillac Preps Self-Driving Tech for 2017
In the not-too-distant future, your Cadillac could know that another car is approaching from a blind corner and warn you before you or the other car could see or detect the danger.
Related: Feds: Car-to-Car Tech Can Save Lives
That’s because so-called “vehicle-to-vehicle” technology will make its debut in an all-new 2017 car from GM’s luxury division, CEO Mary Barra told reporters at the Intelligent Transport System World Congress in Detroit on Sunday. The 2017 Cadillac CTS will also boast such tech.
GM plans to debut the technology under the term “Super Cruise,” which will also enable semi-autonomous driving. Super Cruise can brake, accelerate and maintain your lane through steering assist without any driver input. Many automakers already offer such technology — Mercedes-Benz’s Distronic Plus with Steering Assist, for example — but require you to periodically keep your hands on the wheel. In certain highway conditions, Super Cruise will not.
“We view this as a next logical step from systems like Adaptive Cruise” control, Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell told us in an email. “Drivers use Cruise Control-type systems already and they use it selectively, maintaining full control but using technology to help. That’s exactly how we view this going forward. We like Super Cruise a lot more than ‘Driverless Car’ or ‘Autonomous’ — as these terms are a bit anti-driver.”
Car-to-car communication, meanwhile, means certain 2017 Cadillac models will transmit information like vehicle speed, location and direction of travel to other cars equipped to handle such information. And by late this decade, an increasing number of new cars could be able to do just that. GM’s announcement comes less than a month after a new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration endorsed two specific examples of connected-car technology — intersection-movement assist and left-turn assist.
Cadillac could be the tip of the car-to-car iceberg, as it were, because the Department of Transportation is considering making such technology mandatory.
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