General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) has announced that Super Cruise, Cadillac’s answer to the Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) Autopilot system, will be launched in fall. The hands-free driving system will be available in the Cadillac CT6 sedan and is being branded as the first of its kind. Though Tesla’s Autopilot system has been available for a couple of years, the electric carmaker requires that drivers should not take their hands off the wheel even when the self-driving system is in control.
In the case of Super Cruise, the system will be truly hands-free since it will be equipped with a technology that monitors the position of the head and if it notices that the driver is not concentrating on driving, the car comes to a complete stop.
LIDAR system
Cadillac’s Super Cruise map is also unique and is likely to have an edge over other systems. Rather than relying heavily on the volume of data that has been collected over a long period of time like in the case of Tesla’s Autopilot, Super Cruise is using LIDAR which is 3D laser imaging that is highly precise. This system focuses on the quality of road data rather than the volume. This, however, uses up far more resources compared to the system employed by Tesla.
To illustrate, Barry Walkup the chief engineer of Cadillac says that Super Cruise will for instance monitor construction zones and have them regularly remapped using trucks fitted with LIDAR. This would be much better than the Autopilot system since, as was recently demonstrated, the Tesla system was fooled by lane markers at a construction zone that were imperfect.
Only for highways
Cadillac’s Super Cruise will be limited to highways though. While Tesla would also impose a similar restriction, the Autopilot system has also shown to work relatively well on roads that are smaller. That could mean more risk but Tesla customers can handle that compared to the Cadillac crowd, a group that is older and more mainstream, who will not trade in anything for safety.
On Thursday shares of General Motors Company fell by 1.53% to close the day at $33.39.