GM taking its Supercruise into the city
General Motors is looking to take its pioneering Super Cruise handsfree driving technology from the highway to the hustle and bustle of city streets.
GM has a “big team” working on a version of Super Cruise called Ultra Cruise that would function in “neighbourhoods, city streets and subdivisions,” Doug Park, GM head of global product development, said during Citi’s 2020 Car of the Future Symposium webcast.
Super Cruise was introduced in 2017 on the Cadillac CT6, and was updated in 2019 to include 320,000 kilometres of highways in the United States and Canada. GM still has to make a few updates before Ultra Cruise rolls out, meaning it could be years until we see the system in urban centres.
The Ultra Cruise system is classified as a “driver-assist feature” and not full self-driving technology. It ranks Level 2 on the SAE self-driving scale, which is a long way from Level 5, where a car might have the same capabilities as a human driver.
Level 2 still requires constant monitoring from the driver in case something goes wrong.
Super Cruise uses eye-recognition technology to determine if the driver is paying attention to the road, and if they aren’t, it can bring the car to a safe stop. It uses lidar, GPS and sensors to determine the position of the vehicle and act accordingly. The adaptive cruise control and lane-centring technology work together to make for a hands-free experience.