1966 Cadillac De Ville 2 Door on 2040-cars

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GM investing $2 billion in Tennessee plant to build Cadillac Lyriq, other EVs

DETROIT — General Motors said on Tuesday it will invest $2 billion to convert its Spring Hill, Tennessee, factory to produce electric vehicles, starting with the new Cadillac Lyriq, alongside existing combustion-engine Cadillacs. Spring Hill will be GM's third U.S. electric vehicle factory, along with existing plants in Detroit and Orion Township, Michigan. The Tennessee plant was built in 1990 as the exclusive source for GM's now-defunct Saturn brand. The Cadillac Lyriq crossover is slated to go into production in Spring Hill in late 2022, according to AutoForecast Solutions (AFS), which tracks industry production plans. AFS said it expects some electric vehicle production will be announced at a later date for a factory in Mexico. Among additional investments, GM on Tuesday said it will spend $32 million at its truck plant in Flint, Michigan, to increase production of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra heavy-duty pickups. GM will spend $100 million to shift production of the redesigned GMC Acadia crossover from Spring Hill to a plant near Lansing, Michigan. Spring Hill will continue to build the gas-engine Cadillac XT5 and XT6 crossovers. The plant also will build other future electric vehicles in addition to the Lyriq. The automaker's plans for investing in U.S. factories comes with two weeks left in the U.S. presidential election campaign. President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden are competing for support from auto workers in Midwestern swing states. GM Chief Executive Mary Barra has outlined plans to invest $20 billion by 2025 in new electric vehicles and battery technology. The automaker is spending $2.2 billion to overhaul and retool its Detroit-Hamtramck factory to build a GMC Hummer EV electric pickup truck in late 2021, followed by an automated robotaxi and other electric vehicles. GM builds its electric Chevrolet Bolt at a large assembly plant north of Detroit.

Cadillac welcomes back Entourage favorite Ari Gold

With publicity for the long-awaited Entourage movie ramping up, we're finding that one of the stars of the film happens to be the handsome Cadillac Ciel Concept convertible. It makes a number of appearances in the trailers with Vince, E, Turtle, and Johnny Drama cruising about, despite the fact that it isn't actually a production vehicle. We guess it pays to be Aquaman and Enzo Ferrari. Supporting its tie-in with the flim, Cadillac has enlisted Jeremy Piven, famed for his roll as outrageous, obnoxious, abrasive, and amusing talent agent Ari Gold, to star alongside its droptop sedan. The pair are the focus of a four-minute featurette welcoming the actor's character back while expounding on the series-ending cliffhanger that basically made the movie a sure thing. Take a look at the spot, which was directed and written by Entourage creator Doug Ellin. And be sure to check out the brotastic HBO series when it makes the jump to the big screen on June 3.

Teaching autonomous vehicles to drive like (some) humans

While I love driving, I can't wait for fully autonomous vehicles. I have no doubt they'll reduce car accidents, 94 percent of which are caused by human error, leading to more than 37,000 road deaths in the U.S. last year. And if it means I can fly home at night in winter and get safely shuttled to my house an hour-plus away — and not have to endure a typical white-knuckle drive in the dark with torrential rain and blinding spray from 18-wheelers on Interstate 84 — sign me up. Autonomous technology will also take some of the stress, tedium and fatigue out of long highway drives, as I recently discovered while testing Cadillac Super Cruise. AVs are also supposed to eventually help increase traffic flow and reduce gridlock. But according to a recent Automotive News article, as the first wave of AVs are being tested on public roads, they're having the opposite effect. Part of the problem is they drive too cautiously and are programmed to strictly follow the written rules of the road rather than going with the flow of traffic. "Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way, and the reality is that autonomous vehicles in the future may have to do the same thing if they don't want to be the source of bottlenecks," Karl Iagnemma, CEO of self-driving technology developer NuTonomy, told Automotive News. "You put a car on the road which may be driving by the letter of the law, but compared to the surrounding road users, it's acting very conservatively." I get it that, like teen drivers, AVs need a ramp up period to learn the unwritten rules of the road and that a skeptical public has to be convinced of the technology's safety. But this is where I become less of a champion on AVs, since where I live in the Pacific Northwest we already have more than our share of overly cautious human drivers. Since moving here 12 years ago, I've found it's an interesting paradox that a region famous for its strong coffee, where you'd think most drivers would be jacked up on caffeine, is also the home to annoyingly measured motorists. As an auto-journo colleague living in Seattle so aptly put it: "People in the Pacific Northwest drive as if they have nowhere to go." If you drive like me and always have somewhere to go — and usually are in a hurry to get there — it's absolutely maddening.