General Motors filed to trademark Driveware in Canada this week, GM Authority has uncovered.
Filed on January 3rd, 2022 with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, the application is assigned serial number 97200196. The application was filed under the Goods and Services category reserved for “computer software, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, global positioning system and radar object detectors for the semi-autonomous driving of motor vehicles.”
GM announced this week that its next-generation hands-free driver-assist system, Ultra Cruise, will be powered by a scalable computer architecture developed by American semiconductor company Qualcomm. While the automaker does not refer to the scalable Ultra Cruise computer as Driveware, this week’s announcement brought GM’s future semi- and fully-autonomous vehicle strategy more into focus, so it’s not surprising to see it now making moves to secure trademarks that could be used in this AV rollout.
The AI operating system in autonomous vehicles is obviously referred to as software, while the cameras, radars and other physical objects that relay information to the software stack are referred to as hardware. Driveware, therefore, could be a catch-all term used to refer to both the software and hardware arrays that enable self-driving operation in GM’s future AVs. We’ll have to wait for an official announcement from GM to know how it plans to use Driveware, though.
The first GM production vehicle to feature the aforementioned Ultra Cruise system will likely be the Cadillac Celestiq sedan, which will go on sale in the U.S. by mid-decade. Ultra Cruise is an evolution of Super Cruise and is described as a door-to-door hands-free driving system that will handle 95 percent of the driving task. GM says Ultra Cruise will eventually work on all public paved roads in the U.S. and Canada.
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I wonder if the Super Cruise in my 2020 CT6 Premium Luxury will continue to get upgrades? I know that it won’t be able to handle full autonomous driving, but it would be nice if they did a map upgrade for 4 lane limited access and 2 lane highways around the U.S. Not all driving is done on interstate highway systems. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I won’t fork over $200K+ for a Celestiq…maybe a used one after they replace the battery pack.