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GM intends to offer semi-autonomous vehicles by 2020

Prepare for a few years of technological saber-rattling, as the world's automakers begin pushing to bring self-driving cars to market. Earlier this week, Nissan announced that it aims to offer autonomous vehicles by 2020, while Google, BMW and several other marks are working on similar efforts.
General Motors is doing things differently, though. Rather than push for a fully autonomous car, it's continuing to refine its semi-autonomous Super Cruise, a product that we tested in April 2012 and that will eventually see use on some Cadillacs before trickling down to the rest of the General Motors family. Super Cruise, which is undergoing testing in the Cadillac SRX, doesn't take complete control out of the driver's hands. Rather, under a very specific set of circumstances on the freeway, it will marry the capabilities of things like lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control to allow the driver to take their hands off the wheel. All of which sounds a lot like the system Mercedes-Benz is launching on the 2014 S-Class.
The system is still in development, according to John Capp, GM's director of electrical controls and active safety technology. Now that that the biggest hurdle, steering control, has been cleared, GM's engineers can focus on things like teaching the system to adapt to differing road conditions and visibility levels. As we reported in 2012, Super Cruise is still befuddled in low-visibility situations or when road markings aren't particularly clear.

Cadillac introducing V2V communications on 2017 CTS sedans

While Audi has introduced vehicle-to-infrastructure technology in select cars in select cities, Cadillac is focusing on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, and it all starts with the CTS sedan. Starting this month, the company will be adding V2V equipment to 2017 models. The feature will be standard on cars in the US and Canada. These V2V devices will allow these new Cadillacs to communicate with each other up to 980 feet away. The cars will be able to transmit and receive information on speed, direction, and location. An example of how this data can be used is in detecting a car coming up a side street that could pose a possible collision risk. The cars will also be able to transmit data about brake use, hazard lights, and low traction situations for advance warning of hazards. The warnings can be displayed on the instrument panel and heads-up display. Currently, the system only communicates with other CTS sedans equipped with the technology. According to Chris Bonelli at Cadillac part of the reason is that the CTS will be the only car with the equipment on US roads at the moment, but it also isn't currently set to communicate with other cars if they were to be offered right away. However, he said that the company is absolutely willing to work with other companies to make the system compatible if or when other cars are offered with the technology. This V2V system also doesn't send data to any sort of network, instead only communicating with nearby cars. For the time being, this precludes the possibility of receiving road condition information from cars that are farther away. But as Cadillac points out, it should work under any conditions with no delay since it isn't dependent on information from a network. As far as security is concerned, Bonelli told us that the Cadillac system does have firewalls and other security measures to keep it protected from interference. He also said the cars don't store any data they receive. In addition, none of the data could be used to identify a particular person. The cars use a radio frequency set aside by the government for this use. The introduction of this technology also puts Cadillac well ahead of proposed legislation by the Department of Transportation. The organization wants this type of short-range V2V communications equipment to be a standard feature by 2023, believing the technology could prevent many injuries and deaths due to crashes. Related Video:

Why Cadillac thinks it needs to succeed in Europe to sell cars elsewhere

Ward's Auto has taken an interesting look at the renewed focus General Motors is showing towards Cadillac in Europe. Susan Docherty, president and managing director of Chevrolet and Cadillac in Europe (pictured), says in order for the luxury brand to thrive in China, it first needs to succeed in the old country. The reason? Chinese buyers look to Europe for cues as to what's deemed worthy of the term "luxury." There are hurdles to the plan, however. In addition to the fact that the EU is flooded with high-end nameplates, GM doesn't necessarily have the distribution network in place to put buyers behind the wheel.
Combine that with persistent economic woes and Cadillac's checkered past marred by a lack of diesel engine options and a bankrupt distributor, and the road ahead for the brand looks like less of an uphill climb and more like a straight-up cliff face. But Docherty is optimistic and says she has a plan for the brand. We recommend heading over to Ward's for a closer look at the full read.