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2018 Cadillac CT6 Drivers' Notes | Super Cruiser

The 2018 Cadillac CT6 showcases General Motors' impressive Super Cruise feature. It's the next milestone on the way to an autonomous future, though GM is being conservative about promoting Super Cruise's considerable prowess. It helps the driver, GM says. Does it work? Our editors have been testing one this week as the calendar turns and the temperatures drop in Michigan. Also, the CT6 is a really nice car. Here's what we think. Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder: Super Cruise, man. On Wednesday night, I rode home in a 2018 Cadillac CT6 with Super Cruise. I say "rode," but I was sitting in the driver's seat. I spent more time with my hands off the steering wheel than on it. It was super relaxing. Once I got on the highway, I set the cruise control, waited for the steering wheel icon to show up on the instrument cluster, and hit the button on the steering wheel that looked like a steering wheel (pretty meta, to be honest). The top section of the wheel illuminated in a green arc, and I felt the weight of the steering lift as the car began driving itself. I put my feet flat on the floor, rested my hands on my knees, and just watched the road while listening to a podcast ("The Dollop," if you were wondering). To be honest, I had trouble concentrating on the audio, as my thoughts were captivated by the way the car managed the road and traffic around me. Sure, I had to change lanes on my own and take over steering on interchanges and surface streets, but when the AI took the reins, it had my complete confidence. Perhaps just as surprising, the CT6 was also a blast to drive manually. It felt super smooth, with plenty of power and poise. I enjoyed bending it through 50-mph curves almost as much as I enjoyed being driven. Almost. Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore: Super Cruise just works. I was blown away how easy it was to use and how well it just did what it was supposed to do. Merging into the teeth of rush hour traffic in metro Detroit, I braced for the worst. I figured I'd be stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock and Super Cruise would never get deployed. Frankly, I was cynical Super Cruise would work. But then I was able to hit the 70-mph speed limit and figured, well, let's just see about this thing. Like John, I did the two-steps to set up SC, and boom, it worked. It trailed the cars in front of me at a proper distance. It braked naturally to a stop and then resumed speed. It slowed down when a Jeep Grand Cherokee cut me off.

Cadillac CTS wins 2014 Motor Trend Car of the Year [w/video]

For the second time, the Cadillac CTS has been named Motor Trend's Car of the Year. After winning the COTY crown for 2008, the new-for-2014 CTS outdid the other two finalists for Car of the Year honors, the Mazda3 and its corporate cousin, the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray.
What's notable about the Caddy's victory, though, is how it simply brushed off its competition. Both the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and BMW 5 Series failed to make the finalist's bracket, leaving the CTS to claim victory. "It had to beat [Mercedes and BMW] on style, on performance, on comfort, and on quality. It has," Motor Trend said in its COTY recap for the CTS.
The team at Motor Trend praised the CTS chassis, calling it "fantastic," and citing weight advantage the Caddy has over the competition. There was also praise heaped on the car's engines, with the 2.0-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder getting nods of approval from the MT team. The team also raved about the VSport model and its twin-turbocharged V6, magnetic shocks and other performance accoutrements.

Cadillac CT6 PHEV battery shape a big departure for GM's plug-in hybrid tech

Anyone with any familiarity with the electric powertrain details for the two General Motors plug-in hybrids will have noticed that the information we have about the newly announced Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid has a lot of numbers in common with the Chevy Volt and the Cadillac ELR, like the 18.4-kWh lithium-ion battery pack and an expected all-electric range of 37 miles. We also noticed that the announcement calls the plug-in CT6 hybrid an actual plug-in hybrid and not an "extended range electric vehicle (EREV)," which is what GM calls the Volt and the ELR. This, of course, means we needed to ask GM some questions. Donny Nordlicht from Cadillac communications told AutoblogGreen that while the Volt and CT6 batteries are both 18.4-kWh, the shape is completely different. In the Volt/ELR, the battery is T-shaped (see it here). The CT6 has four seats, with a tunnel running between the two in the rear, as you can see here, but the battery in the CT6 PHEV is "a cube-shaped pack, which is between rear seats and the trunk," Nordlicht said. "There is no pass through." GM has not yet released any technical schematics about this pack, but Nordlicht said that, "The CT6's advanced mixed-material platform was designed to accommodate the PHEV system by design so that it minimally intrudes on the cabin space." It also means that the CT6 can be ordered as an optional PHEV, while the Volt and ELR were purpose-built plug-ins. GM is also distinguishing between the EREV and PHEV powertrains in its vehicles from this point forward. "We are not discarding the EREV language," Nordlicht said. "The CT6 utilizes a two-motor system mated to a 2.0T 4-cylinder engine, which is an all-new system to Cadillac." We assume that the PHEV packs will use li-ion cells from LG Chem, just like the EREVs do, but Nordlicht did not answer our question on that point. As for other details about the CT6 PHEV – like production, full dimension, and pricing – we will just have to wait until closer to when the vehicle launches for those. Related Video: