Cadillac unveils Enhanced Super Cruise with on-demand lane change functionality
While fully-self-driving cars are not available for sale or use on public roads, there are a multitude of impressive driver-assistance systems that help ease the workload, especially when cruising on the highway. Cadillac’s Super Cruise is among the best systems available today, and it’s about to get even more helpful.
Beginning with the 2021 Cadillac CT4 and CT5 sedans and, afterwards, the 2021 Escalade, Cadillac will roll out Enhanced Super Cruise, a more polished version of the existing (and impressive) system. Enhanced Super Cruise will offer more of what we loved when we used it on the CT6 sedan a while back, and now, the system will safely change lanes for you, on demand.
With Enhanced Super Cruise activated, drivers will simply need to tap or fully engage the turn signal to begin the automated lane-change process. The system—a complicated web of cameras, sensors, and LiDAR map data—will then begin to hunt for an acceptable gap in traffic in the other lane, and make the merge accordingly.
According to Cadillac, some 30 percent of CT6 buyers check the Super Cruise option box. On the 200,000-or-so miles of limited-access highways on which the system is available, customers are engaging Super Cruise around half of the time.
Ironic, then, that the system which debuted in the CT6 won’t spread to the rest of the family in that model’s lifetime. The CT6, which chased the wrong end of the luxurious ideals spectrum, is dead as part of a company-wide restructuring that brings major changes to the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. GM announced on Monday that the plant would transition to be exclusively devoted to assembling electric vehicles.
At the end of last year, Cadillac announced that, in roughly two years, all its models will boast real names in place of the existing alphanumeric strategy—a deadline that will coincide with the first of its all-electric vehicles hitting the streets. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to seeing the all-new Escalade, which is set to break cover in a few days, with the help of famed Hollywood director Spike Lee.
