C8 ME To Have SuperCruise?

[John]

Do you think at some point the C8 would offer SuperCruise? If it is offered as an option, and you are not yet up to speed on what it is and what it is not, here is a really good video to learn a bunch about how it works.

Perhaps we might later see in the supposed “GTS” version of the C8 thought as it must add weight, complexity and cost, IMO we would not be seeing this for the first year ME. However, down the road for the maybe touring version???

Today Cadillac announced it is adding many more interstate miles in both the U.S. and in Canada to be SuperCruise compatible.



https://media.cadillac.com/media/us/...percruise.html

Oh my, the complete route from where I live in Oregon to Bowling Green is SuperCruise compatible.

[455SDguy]

One thing that a SuperCruise option would allow would be for our older friends who love corvette but don't feel safe at driving to still be able to go for a cruise on Sunday afternoon in their new C8.

[Frenzy36]

My opinion is it will be many years before it will be practical and safe. From everything I have read you still have to be in constant control and alert at all times. Perhaps in 10 years they may figure it all out but for now what is really the point if you have to be prepared constantly in case the vehicle needs you to instantly take over control?

[meyerweb]

Oh my, the complete route from where I live in Oregon to Bowling Green is SuperCruise compatible.

But the FUN roads aren't!

One thing that a SuperCruise option would allow would be for our older friends who love corvette but don't feel safe at driving to still be able to go for a cruise on Sunday afternoon in their new C8.

As long as they only drive on major highways.

[Frenzy36]

Jalopnik Reviews Cadillac's Super Cruise Makes The Self-Driving Future Seem Possible


Ryan Felton
The building blocks for autonomous cars are already here, but so far the biggest step into that world for actual consumers has been Tesla’s Autopilot. Now General Motors is going there too with a semiautonomous highway driving feature called Super Cruise, available on the new Cadillac CT6. Questions about how it stacks up to Autopilot will be endless, so I’ll get this out of the way first: Super Cruise is not quite as capable as Autopilot, but it’s objectively safer.
A Cadillac CT6 With Semi-Autonomous Super Cruise Sets You Back $71,300

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Trust me, I know. I recently spent a dozen hours driving across four states in a new CT6, with most of time spent on the highway, the only domain for Super Cruise.

(Full Disclosure: Cadillac flew me from New York City to Cleveland, put me up in opulent hotels for three days, provided food and drinks, and paid for gas throughout the trip—all so I could try the Super Cruise system myself and not rely on the input from writers who aren’t me.)

By safer, to be clear, it’s a minor take. Super Cruise is like having a high school teacher sitting in front of you, telling to keep your eyes forward throughout class. Look away for a moment, and a red line starts blinking in your face.

With Autopilot, which I spent a couple dozen hours with this summer, the safety warnings that ask a driver to resume control of the wheel are prevalent, but I quickly found I was able to frequently wander and gaze about the road without issue.

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With Super Cruise, I quickly realized I had to look ahead no matter what.

So, Super Cruise is not so much an answer to Autopilot as much as it’s a helpful driving companion that’ll help familiarize consumers with the technology and illustrate the benefits that come from autonomous tech. Most drivers are generally weirded out about autonomous driving features—at least for now—and one of the simplest ways to help familiarize people with the technology is through baby steps. And that’s what Super Cruise is: a tip-toe along the path toward full autonomy. Only One In Four Americans Trust Autonomous Vehicles Right Now

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That’s not to understate the significance of what Super Cruise accomplishes, and GM knows it’s something to champion. The automaker has, over the last several weeks, sent a Cadillac team on a coast-to-coast trip to show off the new CT6.

I don’t want to belabor the Tesla comparisons, but the tech-heavy CT6 should make for a stellar competitor to the Model S if you find yourself buying a car purely for the driver aids. A Super Cruise-equipped CT6 with the Premium Luxury Trim starts at $71,300, a few thousand dollars shy of what’s now the cheapest Model S.

That’s all fine on paper; here’s what Super Cruise is like on the road. Photo: Ryan Felton/Jalopnik How It Works

Cadillac’s proudly calling Super Cruise the first “true hands-free” driving feature on the road today—and that’s one way it differentiates from from competitors. Tesla’s Autopilot and others require drivers to shimmy the steering wheel a tad to signal they’re still paying attention. That little camera is always keeping an eye on you.
That’s one aspect where Super Cruise sets itself apart. To make it work, Cadillac engineers plopped a face-detection camera along the top of the steering wheel that’s always monitoring your face.
The system can only be deployed where GM says it’s OK: that is, on divided, limited-access highways, with defined on and off-ramps. And you have to be square in the middle of the road to turn on the feature before it can be activated.
Along with a suite of cameras and sensors, Super Cruise relies on and incorporates LiDAR mapping data; the company says it has mapped every highway mile of U.S. and Canada—160,000 in total—to ensure the system’s primed to work.

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Any construction projects can be imputed to the system by GM, so Super Cruise is prevented from being activated in those relevant areas. A high-precision GPS system notifies the car where it’s at within two meters.



Super Cruise sounds like a hyper-intense version of cruise control, and while it’s a refined, far-more advanced iteration, it’s still eminently practical and timid. That’s because is has a number of limitations.

The system can only be deployed where GM says it’s OK: that is, on divided, limited-access highways, with defined on and off-ramps. And you have to be square in the middle of the road to turn on the feature before it can be activated.

When that simple dance is complete, a green icon lights up on the dash, and with the press of a button, the car takes over.

Unlike Autopilot, Super Cruise maxes out at 85 mph. On the second day of our journey, I managed to find a glitch, seemingly by chance. The way the system’s designed to work, after Super Cruise is engaged, you’re only supposed to be able to press the + key to increase speed to 85. From there, you can hit the throttle—but as soon as the car reaches 92 mph, Super Cruise is supposed to engage.
Photo: Ryan Felton/Jalopnik
During one stretch of the day, when no other car was around on the highway, I wanted to confirm that was the case. I managed to lock in a speed of 95 mph, and the CT6 hit that speed before I relented and brought it back down. (Any ticket was on me after all.) Later, I tried again and locked in a speed at 105 mph.

When I asked Cadillac about this, I initially received nothing short of puzzlement. That prompted Robb Bolio, Cadillac’s vehicle performance manger who was involved in the Super Cruise project, to conduct some extra tests, and indeed a glitch was discovered.


“So we went back and did a bunch of testing on it,” he said. “What it actually is, there’s a sneak path for the set speed, but the only way to get it to do it is if you rapidly push it or push and hold the resume+ button and you get the set speed to show a higher value”


“As soon as you let go of that button it goes right back to 85,” he added. “It only showed that when you push and hold it and it doesn’t do it every time.”

That didn’t exactly explain what happened to me, but the vehicles we tested were preproduction models, and Bolio said there’s no safety issue presented by the glitch. And Cadillac said they’re actively working to finesse the software.


“We’ll work through it,” Bolio said.

The system also doesn’t allow for lane changes, something that puts Autopilot a step up in capability—hit the turn signal there and the car will do so if the maneuver is determined to be safe. Bolio said customers didn’t express significant interest in the idea, and Cadillac believes lane changes should be a “driver-initiated maneuver.”

“We want them in the loop during lane changes,” he said. “That’s really the gist of it. It wasn’t a priority to our customers to have that feature.”

The system’s hardware could allow for it to be added down the line, he said. “We’re always looking for opportunities to improve and offer more features,” Bolio said. (Autopilot, unlike Super Cruise, allows for over-the-air, remote updates to the driver-aid system. The only OTA updates that happen for Super Cruise are for map updates.)


And changing lanes, really, isn’t that much of a heavy lift. When Super Cruise is engaged, a green line appears atop the steering wheel; when you’re ready to switch lanes, the line turns blue. As soon as you’re centered in the adjacent lane, a green line reappears, signifying the car’s back in control. Is Super Cruise better than Autopilot? Depends on what you want.
Bolio’s reasoning about not implementing automatic lane changes echoes Cadillac’s emphasis on delivering an extra-safe, but reliable, semi-autonomous system to customers.

Throughout two days of driving, I kept trying to trick the Super Cruise steering wheel camera, but even peering downward could set off the warning system. Sunglasses, known to be problematic for face-scanning tech, were no match for the camera, either. I could check a text, maybe, but I was more or less resigned to enjoying the view directly in front of me. And that’s OK! Why Now

GM has been working on Super Cruise for a long time, and with automakers pouring billions into developing self-driving technology, it’s no surprise that a sudden crush of vehicles are set to have semi-automated features.


Is Super Cruise better than Autopilot? Depends on what you want, I suppose. Tesla recommends only using the Autosteer function on highways with a center divide and clear lane markings; as I quickly realized over the summer, though it can be used in off-highway environments, it’s not ideal whatsoever.

But in the recommended highway scenario, Autopilot was just as relaxing and comfortable to use as Super Cruise. Personally, I prefer the auto-lane change function; that seems like a feature that’s entirely subjective, though.

Both make long-distance treks far easier to handle. When you can accept—and it’s definitely hard—that the car’s capable of handling most of the highway driving, so long as you’re paying attention, you’ll find that lengthy drives aren’t so tiresome.

Many of us who love to drive are concerned what place we’ll have as technology like this becomes more common. But even if you love driving, I see the advantages in helping with some of the most boring and monotonous aspects of operating a car, like endlessly long freeway drives. The CT6 is a fun and powerful machine. Giving the driver some aid on long road trips doesn’t take away from that.

Also, being that this is GM—inherently a much larger company than Tesla—it’s not hard to imagine the tech will trickle down into other models soon. (They haven’t said yet, for the record.) So Super Cruise and its variants could very well be most people’s first real experience with semi-autonomous cars, rather than the tech-forward first adopters who tend to go for Teslas.

Where GM succeeded here is that Super Cruise worked as it was marketed, besides the small glitch I found. In an environment where many are still skeptical or slowly becoming accustomed to autonomous tech, that’s a good thing.

I can’t say how many customers Cadillac will win over because of the system, but it shows that GM’s serious about having a stake in an automotive future that cedes more control to automation.

[Milliwatt Rob]

A system that is designed to allow you to not pay attention, but requires you to pay attention. What could possibly go wrong?

I suspect the system would not screen out drivers who are so visually impaired that they are legally blind, or suffering muscle motor disease, such as Parkinsons, or even drivers with mild dementia.

Sounds perfect for Florida.

[Boomer]

Do you think at some point the C8 would offer SuperCruise?

I don't think so. It doesn't seem to me to be the kinda feature a driver of a Corvette would want (or need). Driving is one of the reasons folks by these cars. If it is available, sure hope its a stand alone option that I can easily avoid. Regular cruise control is enough IMO.

I'll opt out of it, if I can, even on my 2021 all season detuned 500HP Blackwing CT6.

[JB]

I test drove teslas AP1 and it was impressive. AP2 was garbage....

when driving cadillacs supercruise in the CT6 it was easy to see why gm decided to spin cruise automation into a separate company with a market capitalization of 19 billion..

nobodies system , not mercedes or teslas “auto pilot “ type option competes with GM s super cruise. Now cruise automation can sell to all manufacturers. Smart move by the powers at be at General Motors.

its that good... i wanted AP for my better half and it was money well spent...

for me? Ill pass...yet it is an excellent and impressive system.

[Meldoon]

The future is coming, whether you like it or not. This tech will be standard equipment in all vehicles before you know it.

[meyerweb]

Does supercruise require steer-by-wire? If so, that means only artificial road feel / feedback at the steering wheel. Not ideal for a high performance sports car.

[John]

Our C7’s have electric steering.

[meyerweb]

Our C7’s have electric steering.

They have electric power assist, but I believe the linkage is still mechanical recirculating ball. For supercruise to steer the car, the mechanical linkage may need to go away and be completely steer by wire.

[JB]

Supercruise does not require steer by wire.

No worries...its an excellent system.

i wont pay extra for it for myself but for my beauitful wife it would be on my list...

not that she wants it yet for her I would order it.

if this item was mandatory to have in my corvette i would not complain...

its an excellent system for those that have driven vehicles with this technology. Super cruise is far and away superior to everyone else in the market today...

its an impressive system in actual use. Teslas AUtopilot 2 was in my opinion garbage driven back to back with GM s.

for all the fanfare and much of it deserved...GM is in my opinion superior to tesla in many ways....

im hopeful in 2021 or 2022 GMs fleet of advanced full ev s and vehicles using supercruise will be in full swing.

GM s research and development not to mention its 300k validation process really delivers the best ownership experience amd that comes from decades of owning many brands both foreign and domestic.

super cruise is a winner,