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Super Cruise Arriving This Fall With 2018 Cadillac CT6

It has been a long time coming, but despite delays, the beginning of General Motors’ autonomous revolution has arrived. This fall, the 2018 Cadillac CT6 will arrive with GM’s Super Cruise technology to offer a seamless, hands-free highway driving experience.

The Super Cruise system utilizes two advanced technology systems to allow the luxury of hands-free driving: a driver attention system and precision LiDAR map data. The driver attention system is the steering wheel mounted unit we previously saw in a Cadillac advertisement. It features a small camera and infrared lights to focus on the driver’s head position to determine attentiveness when Super Cruise is activated.

2018 Cadillac CT6 Super Cruise 003

If the system detects a prolonged period of time where the driver has not acknowledged his or her surroundings, Super Cruise will alert the driver to return their attention to the road. In the meantime, the system will still function, steering and controlling the car as needed. However, if the initial alerts do not prompt a response from the driver, Super Cruise houses the ability to pull the CT6 off the road to a controlled stop and alert OnStar first responders of a potentially unresponsive driver.

2018 Cadillac CT6 Super Cruise 002

Overall, the system always encourages the driver to remain attentive at all times. Sleeping, reading and other various extra curriculars are not advised.

The incredible attention system is paired with real-time cameras, sensors, GPS and LiDar map data, which allows Super Cruise to work on designated highways marked with “on” and “off” ramps. The system cannot be engaged outside of these mapped road conditions. That’s not to say the mapping isn’t extensive; engineers mapped every single mile of highway across the United States and Canada to make Super Cruise a luxurious companion to freeway travel.

2018 Cadillac CT6 Super Cruise 001

The introduction of hands-free highway driving is only a step towards completely autonomous vehicles, but Super Cruise is nearly here today. Cadillac will offer Super Cruise as an option on the 2018 CT6 sedan when it launches this fall.

Former GM Authority staff writer.

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Comments

  1. We don’t need cars to drive themselves, except perhaps in the emergency pullover system as mentioned in the article. If someone can’t be bothered to actually drive their car on a long road trip, but they can afford a luxury car, then pay a chauffeur or take some other mode of transportation.

    Reply
    1. Don’t like it. Don’t buy one.

      Reply
    2. “We don’t need cars to drive themselves”

      When you say ‘We’ you really mean yourself.

      Given how terrible some drivers are on the road, having the luxury of a car that can drive for you would make many trips much more pleasant…and what better place to do so than in a Cadillac.

      Besides, if Cadillac (and GM) didn’t get on board with this, they’d be effectively ceding more of the luxury car market to the Germans and the Japanese. I don’t think it would be in Cadillac’s best interest to appear as being behind the technological curve.

      Being on the cutting edge is celebrated and lusted for. To be the opposite of the cutting edge is to promote a world of dull predictability, with no innovation, and stale designs that promise nothing new to user….like Chrysler.

      Reply
  2. Highway driving is boring AF, so this is a great step toward autonomous driving. Also it’s probably safer than some of the clowns ‘operating’ vehicles anyway.

    Reply
  3. 2018 CT6, as I was saying all along and everyone kept saying it would show up on the 17 model. Anyway good to see its making it to production. I wonder if it will only be available on Platinum or lower trims.

    Reply
    1. I had a salesman tell me that it would show up in 2017 on the ATS first back in 2014

      Reply
      1. You trust the word of a salesman? They only want to make a sale, and they’ll tell you anything to get you to sign. Don’t EVER be credulous.

        Reply
  4. I sometimes don’t want to hold the wheel all the time and it would be nice to have a break whale the car is still driving….I think Simi atomanous and emergency breaking will be standard in all cars by 2025….anything beyond that will be unessary.

    Reply
  5. Road warriors do not drive the CT6. Get this tech in an Escalade, ASAP.

    Reply
  6. This tech will be favored by the rich seniors who are retired and have money to spend so they take it easy. If the Super Cruise can protect the driver and passengers, then this will convince the NHTSA to allow the reduction of safety systems and lessen the weight. I prefer a car that can evade an accident than one that gets involved.

    Reply
  7. It is very good that Cadillac offers current technology, that helps them receive a prestigious image.

    Super Cruise is another detail that Cadillac needs to raise its image for the market, now you have to expect it to work well.

    This technology is already used by the Mercedes C, but it is a bit confusing

    Reply
  8. This technology will be a godsend to the medical and legal industries, as there will be many and notable failures resulting in injuries and deaths. And everyone with one of these cars will blame the system for the failures, even if they were caused by the driver. We’re counting on the same technology that routinely fails on our computers, devices, etc., but those failures don’t currently end up in bloodshed. This will make the GM ignition switch problems look like child’s play. If you are a doubter, look at the YouTube video one guy did on the current CT6 in which he reported during his two hours of testing that two times the car stopped suddenly because it thought it saw a pedestrian in the path, and of course there were none to be seen. This is why I turned off the pedestrian stopping feature in my new XT5, which, by the way, in its first two months did a strange panic stopping number when I backed out of my garage (which I had done successfully many times before) at 2 mph and subsequently 5 mph – a pattern that repeated when I tried it out on the street, where there also were no issues behind it! It will be sad to see all of the reports of crashes involved with this technology, and don’t worry, the media will cover each one of them.

    Reply
    1. “We’re counting on the same technology that routinely fails on our computers, devices, etc”

      What device do you have the runs QNX or a customized Linux build?

      NONE of the autonomous technologies are being built upon consumer-lever OS’s.

      Reply
      1. Well, I find that QNX runs the infotainment on many vehicles, and Linux is not a real-time OS (hence the hourglass pauses), so this gives us no security. We really need the equivalent to the systems that do the fly-by-wire on fighters and airliners – which also have triple redundancy. Lacking that, we are ending up with Self-Crashing-Cars!

        Reply
        1. You only ever see the frontend, don’t you?

          Those hourglass pauses are all frontend. The dedicated environment for an autonomous car is currently backend. How it’s prettied up for you on your screen in car is all you’ll ever see, but it’s not a representation of the computation that’s driving the car.

          Reply
  9. I’m 61 now and I plan on retiring to guess where, Florida within two years. I’ll have family including my daughter and two grandsons left in Indiana. I will be ready to trade in my 2016 XTS by then and I’d love to have help in driving those long distances. I want the massage seats too! lol

    Reply
  10. I bet a lot of mid 40s single guys and teens will love this feature, if you know what I mean.

    Reply
  11. Yes, yet another added complexity added to today’s insanely complex cars. And this will only add more cell phone and video game playing time in for today’s lazy Millennials. It will also be very interesting to see how this works in the Winter climates with ice and snow buildup in sub zero temperatures. It will also drive up the already fantasy land pricing of the overpriced CT6 and other Cadillac’s. Pretty soon driving will be another lost art like home cooking, knitting, sewing and many other skillsets. And just wait until terrorists and ISIS get a hold of the tech to take your fully autonomous car over and smash it into a cement wall, drive it off a bridge or steal your vehicle. I’ll control my own vehicle thank you very much!!!!!!!!!!

    Reply
    1. “It will also drive up the already fantasy land pricing of the overpriced CT6 and other Cadillac’s.”

      It’s not overpriced. It’s just out of reach. No luxury product was ever produced cheaply enough so that anyone could have it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a luxury by definition.

      Cadillac can’t lead the world by NOT offering autonomous driving. That’s not the way any luxury product has ever been marketed; by not offering unique and cutting edge features.

      As for winter driving, the car only has to cover the road once in sunny conditions in the summer to chart out the road, and then share that data with other cars. Then it’ll know where every single inch and line along that road is, and will be able to predictively map them even when the road is covered in snow.

      Not all of autonomous driving will rely on live conditional video streaming and processing either. It’s far easier computationally to simply download the coordinates and let the car follow them as mapped by other cars, and then use the cameras for corrections and correlation to the known landmarks in the roads data set.

      “home cooking, knitting, sewing and many other skillsets”

      Humanity has also lost the skillsets of scrimshaw and handwriting, but overall, humanity has survived and will continue to do so.

      Reply
  12. the CT6 is is way overpriced….I sat in the CT6 at a Cadillac dealer ship and it looks and feels like a $30k car especially when I found out that the front logo was just a sticker and I found more premium materials in the CTS than in the CT6….THEY CHEAPED OUT BAD with the CT6.

    Reply

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