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GM Ultra Cruise hands-free system will take on Tesla Full Self-Driving

GM announced Wednesday that it will introduce a new semi-self-driving suite above its Super Cruise offering. Dubbed Ultra Cruise, it will coexist with GM's existing tech as it goes toe-to-toe with Tesla's "Full Self-Driving." GM says it will be compatible with more than 2 million miles of U.S. and Canadian roadways (with lots of headroom for expansion) and operate in more than 95% of normal driving situations at launch. The system will utilize more sensors than the existing Super Cruise system, with "cameras, radars and lidar, developing accurate, 360-degree, three-dimensional statistical representations of the environment surrounding vehicles with redundancies in critical areas." Tesla has long eschewed lidar technology as a means to improve its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving suites, but may be coming around on it. And Tesla recently dropped radar on Model 3 and Model Y to rely on cameras. While there are many competent semi-self-driving systems on the market today, true autonomous vehicles are still in their earliest stages, with Google's Waymo generally considered the leader of the race. Early releases of Tesla's many-times-delayed Full Self-Driving suite have demonstrated just how infantile the technology is, and even it is leaps and bounds ahead of other commercially available technology – and with good reason.    Related: GM sets goals of doubling revenue, leading U.S. electric vehicle sales   Semi-self-driving suites offered in typical mainstream cars are effective upgrades to adaptive cruise control, but even the ability to go for hours on the highway with limited input is nothing compared to the demands placed on a true self-driving platform. Things we take for granted in everyday driving — reacting to traffic lights and signs, changing lanes, navigating turn lanes and safely pulling into traffic, driving close to obstacles such as construction barricades, or something as simple as properly negotiating a tight driveway — are beyond the scope of all other advanced driver assistance suites.  "Ultra Cruise is not just a game changer in terms of what it enables ­– a door-to-door hands-free driving experience – but a technological one as well," said Doug Parks, GM executive vice president of Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain. "It's been developed completely in-house.

Cadillac's XT6 is not, for better or worse, a mini Escalade

In its latest attempt at reinvention, Cadillac has created a trio of admirable sedans — the ATS, CTS, and CT6 — cars that challenge or beat the competition on their own terms, and do so with audacious exterior styling rendered in a distinctly American idiom. But American customers have been ditching cars in favor of high-riding crossovers, and what Cadillac has not had up until recently is a suite of appropriately (or bizarrely) sized crossovers to offer potential consumers, something competitors have been deploying for years or even decades. And so the new, full-size(ish) three-row Cadillac XT6, unveiled officially last week at an event in Detroit, is intended to help address the premier domestic automotive luxury brand's current product shortcomings. "I guess we had so many priorities and had to decide what's the most important thing," says Andrew Smith, Cadillac's executive director of design. "We decided to approach this one from an interior perspective, to do things like provide ease of use for owners, upgrade the infotainment, and allow time for ourselves to learn lessons from the launch of XT4." The XT6 doesn't exactly break any new ground within the segment, but that's not necessarily a criticism. Though huge from a sales perspective, the two-box crossover category is not the industry's leader in beauty or innovation. Still, Caddy's most recent previous crossover, the size-Small XT4, managed to create handsome proportions and a premium appearance at first glance. The XT6 doesn't feel quite so ambitious or coherent, with a front end that is at once sneering and soft, a lengthy flank that feints at muscularity without delivering, and a rather abrupt tailgate that blends the rectilinear and the anodyne. Maybe consumers won't notice? "Our biggest challenge was giving the vehicle a character that works on this scale and platform," says Smith. "We want to make sure all of our cars feel different. We didn't want it to be a mini Escalade. No one wants a mini anything. But we wanted to give it Escalade presence, but in scale. So it's this combination of nice, and aggressive. I'm convinced we will sell more than we think we'll sell." Maybe he's right, and we definitely don't see this vehicle cannibalizing sales of the Escalade. People who want a bold Cadillac can still get that one, and will have a brand new option later this year, we expect, when a new Escalade is released.

Cadillac ATS was almost front-wheel drive

"We were going to do a front-wheel drive Cadillac compact off of Delta because it was going to be less expensive," Doug Parks, General Motors' vice president of global product programs, told the Automotive News during the Detroit Auto Show in January of this year. That sentence, referring to early ATS discussions more than five years ago - a period when the automaker, and the industry, was struggling - reveals that Cadillac's highly acclaimed rear-wheel drive compact sedan almost never happened.
Parks revealed that that automaker actually built a 2.0-liter test mule, on GM's Delta platform (shared with the Chevrolet Cruze and Buick Verano) and tested it in Europe. While the prototype was "pretty darn good," according to Parks, the team realized that in order to compete against Mercedes-Benz and BMW it would have to invest in a new rear-wheel drive platform.
The resulting all-new Alpha platform would eventually underpin the Cadillac ATS, and many would argue that its balanced rear-wheel drive chassis is its single most important attribute. Thankfully, the Alpha's goodness won't stop with the ATS. The upcoming 2014 Cadillac CTS and the future Camaro will also share its architecture, meaning the Cimarron will remain a distant memory.