Repair-It

Hands-off on the highway: Tesla owners pining for "real" Autopilot, trade up to Cadillac

What is it? The rebirth of full-on Autopilot, which Tesla Model S and X owners enjoyed for a little while before a back-seat “driver” died in a crash despite receiving seven warnings from the car to resume control and the lawyers shut down that party. That system was never intended to, you know, actually be an “auto pilot,” and this one’s automatic piloting is considerably more restrictive than Tesla’s cowboy over-the-air upgraded system. It’s also fully vetted by what surely by now must be the jitteriest and most conservative lawyers in all of autodom.

Super Cruise will effectively be the first SAE Level 3 autonomous vehicle offering for highway speeds. (The Audi A8 Level 3 system will shut down above a traffic-jam speed of 37 mph.) Company reps assiduously avoid using that terminology, however, perhaps because competitors such as Ford and Volvo have made a big deal of their intentions to skip over Level 3 and go right to Level 4 “full autonomy,” in which the vehicle is “designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip” (when traveling on mapped roadways—Level 5 is full humanlike go-anywhere autonomy).

I’ll admit I was saddened when Tesla over-the-air “upgraded” Autopilot to require hands on the wheel every few minutes. I’m heartened to see Cadillac introducing a hands-free—and fully vetted—replacement for that pioneering system.

The system consists of front cameras, a map database in back, and a high-precision GPS developed with GM partner Trimble, which can pinpoint the car’s location to within two meters. Conventional GPSes are no more accurate than four meters, GM says.

Because Tesla brought those features to market without the kind of belt-and-suspenders safety regimen that every mainstream, traditional automaker has been practicing for about half a century, Cadillac is ready to take the lead on self-driving car development. The General Motors luxury brand’s new Super Cruise is set to become the most advanced semi-autonomous technology on U.S. and Canadian roads if none of the above changes.

Super Cruise feels like a feature ready for the masses. The system is deeply integrated into the vehicle and using it is akin to using cruise control or turning on the lights. There’s a button for Super Cruise on the steering wheel. Press the button when the system is available and it works. It’s that easy to turn a driver into a passenger.