Last year, General Motors announced a big push into eyes-off driving features. Now that tech is hitting the open road for testing.
On Monday, GM said it is kicking off “supervised public-road testing on limited access highways across California and Michigan” of its next-generation driver-assistance technology. Soon, it said, more than 200 test vehicles will be on the road, some manually driven and some running driver-assistance tech under supervision.
Previously, the automaker had deployed vehicles to collect training data. Now, after driving 1 million miles across 34 states, it’s moving into the testing phase. That’s the next step in developing a driver-assistance feature that is so reliable, the driver won’t have to have their eyes on the road.
“This marks a significant transition from manual data collection to active automated technology testing on public roads,” the company said in a press release.
GM plans to launch an eyes-off version of Super Cruise in 2028, first on a new lidar-equipped Escalade IQ. The test vehicle GM posted a photo of on Monday is an Escalade IQ with extra sensors mounted to its roof. Over time, GM says, the tech will make it into more electric and combustion vehicles while the capability expands from highways to other environments. Eventually, the idea is to offer “driveway-to-driveway” capability.
That would mean you can hop into your car and have it take you to a destination while you scroll the web or check emails. It’s an ambitious goal, and one that no auto company has made happen just yet. But many are trying. This new era of hype around autonomous driving isn’t all about Waymo and other robotaxis. We’ve seen a flurry of announcements from car companies looking to bring higher levels of automation to consumer vehicles.
Mercedes-Benz had the only true eyes-off highway-driving system in the U.S., which functioned on select California and Nevada highways when stuck in traffic. But the company recently canceled it to make way for a new Nvidia-based feature that’s more similar Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised). Ford plans to bring eyes-off driving to its Universal EV platform, which debuts with a $30,000 truck. Rivian aims to launch eyes-off driving in 2027 and eventually offer a system that requires no human intervention. Lucid says its upcoming midsize crossover, the Cosmos, will deliver “mind-off” driving by 2028.
Waymo has largely proved that driverless cars are possible from a technology perspective. Now the question is whether car companies can make safe self-driving systems for consumer vehicles. And, maybe more importantly, who will get there first?
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