Cadillac Xlr Roadster Nav Xm Parktronic Xenon Onstar Only 45k Miles Must See! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

GM Super Cruise is evolving into Ultra Cruise, for hands-off city driving

GM has a "big team" working on an advanced version of its hands-free driving assistance system, Super Cruise, that will expand its capability beyond highways and apply it to city streets, the automaker's vice president of global product development Doug Parks said Tuesday. GM is also continuing to improve its existing Super Cruise product, Parks said during a webcasted interview at Citi’s 2020 Car of the Future Symposium. "As we continue to ratchet up Super Cruise, we continue to add capability and not just highway roads," Parks said, adding that a separate team is working on the hands-free city driving product known internally as "Ultra Cruise." "We're trying to take that same capability off the highway," he said. "Ultra cruise would be all of the Super Cruise plus the neighborhoods, city streets and subdivisions. So Ultra Cruise's domain would be  essentially all driving, all the time." Parks was quick to add that this would not be autonomous driving. Advanced driving assistance systems have become more capable, but they still require a human driver to take control and to be paying attention. "What we're not saying is that Ultra Cruise will be fully autonomous 100% of the time, although that could be one of the end games," Parks said. Parks didn't provide a timeline for when Ultra Cruise might be available. A GM spokesperson said in a statement after his interview that the company continues to expand its hands-free driver assistance system technology across its vehicle portfolio and has "teams looking at how we can expand the capabilities to more scenarios." GM said it "does not have a name or anything specific to announce today, but stay tuned." This new Ultra Cruise feature would put it in competition with Tesla's Autopilot advanced driving system, which is largely viewed as the most capable on the market today. Tesla's "full self-driving" package, a more capable version of Autopilot, can now identify stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows the car to a stop on approach. This feature is still considered to be in beta. GM's Super Cruise uses a combination of lidar map data, high-precision GPS, cameras and radar sensors, as well as a driver attention system, which monitors the person behind the wheel to ensure theyÂ’re paying attention. Unlike TeslaÂ’s Autopilot driver assistance system, users of Super Cruise do not need to have their hands on the wheel. However, their eyes must remain directed straight ahead.

Weekly Recap: GM scales back as Russian auto market teeters

General Motors' extensive plans to scale back its Russian operations are the latest sign the automotive market in the former superpower is collapsing – and there are few signs of recovery. GM said Wednesday it will stop selling mainstream Chevrolets and shutter the entire Opel brand in Russia. The moves leave GM with a luxury-focused presence consisting of Cadillac and Chevrolet's Corvette, Camaro and Tahoe. The cutbacks will be completed by the end of the year. The automaker will also idle its factory in St. Petersburg and end a contract-assembly agreement with Russian manufacturer GAZ. "We had to take decisive action in Russia to protect our business," Opel Group CEO Karl-Thomas Neumann said in a statement. "We confirm our outlook to return the European business to profitability in 2016 and stick to our long-term goals." GM is the latest automaker to scale back in Russia as the economic conditions, volatile currency and uncertainty over the conflict in the Ukraine all have sandbagged new car sales. Last month, vehicle sales collapsed 38 percent in Russia to 128,298 units, according to the Association of European Business, which records sales. Joerg Schreiber, chairman of the AEB automobile manufacturers committee, didn't even feign optimism in a statement announcing the figures. "The market is entering a very difficult phase now, and February is only the beginning," he said. "Industry sentiment is the next few months will be extremely difficult and the market bottom has yet to be found." The dovetails with industry experts, who predict the Russian auto sector will remain in the doldrums. IHS said earlier this year it expects Russia's sales to slip to just 1.8 million units in 2015, which is a 40-percent drop from 2012. Other News & Notes Chief leads Jeep's Easter Safari stable Jeep is bringing seven attention-getting concepts to Moab for its annual Easter Safari off-roading celebration in Utah, but the Chief is perhaps the standout of the group. It salutes the 1970s Cherokee with a throwback appearance and surfer styling cues. The Chief has a custom modified razor grille made famous by the Wagoneer, and it rolls on 17-inch slotted mag wheels. The surf theme comes in with ocean blue paint, floral cloth and leather seats and a tiki-style shifter handle. Based on the Jeep Wrangler, the Chief has removable sides, a 3.6-liter V6 engine and a six-speed manual gearbox.

Hotter Cadillac CT5-V could use the CTS-V's 6.2-liter V8

Cadillac is in the final stages of testing the high-performance variant of the CT5, prototypes are racking up miles all over the world, and a recent report sheds light on the engine screaming between its punched-out fenders. It's a V8, to no one's surprise, but it's not the twin-turbocharged, 4.2-liter unit many believed the sedan would use. Sources familiar with Cadillac's product plan told Car & Driver the hotter CT5 — whose name hasn't been revealed yet — will receive an updated version of the supercharged 6.2-liter V8 that powered the mighty CTS-V. It developed 640 horsepower in the firm's last German-bashing super-sedan, though where engineers will peg the CT5's output remains to be seen. It will roast the rear tires through a paddle-shifted automatic transmission. The publication explained Cadillac chose the 6.2-liter because it's more compact than the 4.2-liter Blackwing engine it developed for the CT6. The former features a pushrod design, while the latter gets twin overhead cams that make it taller and wider. The CT5 is a new model, but its Alpha platform is older than Cadillac's newest V8. Cadillac hasn't announced what will power the flagship CT5. The model is tentatively due out in showrooms before the end of 2020, so we expect to learn more about it in the coming months. Seeing it in the metal for the first time during the 2020 Detroit Auto Show in June isn't entirely out of the question. What's next? If the report is accurate, the much-hyped Blackwing may end up being an orphan engine. It was developed specifically for the Cadillac brand, and inaugurated by the CT6-V that recently went out of production. The many rumors claiming General Motors will put the engine in other models to recoup its investment are falling like dominoes. It won't fit in the CT5, so there's no reason to believe it will end up in the smaller CT4; its flagship version will likely arrive with a twin-turbocharged, 3.6-liter V6 borrowed from the ATS-V. An earlier report claims the next-generation Escalade won't use the Blackwing, either, because making it fit would cost too much. Looking beyond Cadillac, the only General Motors-owned brand that could use the Blackwing is Chevrolet, since we can't imagine the GMC Yukon will get it if the Escalade doesn't. The Tahoe/Suburban duo is off the table, too.