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General Motors said Wednesday that its Super Cruise hands-free highway driving system would add hundreds of thousands of miles of new highways by the end of this year. The new map information, which GM says will come first to vehicles equipped with its “VIP” electrical architecture, doubles the size of the Super Cruise network to 400,000 miles. New routes include several classic American highways outside of the interstates, including Route 66, California’s Pacific Coast Highway, and the Overseas Highway, which spans the length of the road-accessible Florida Keys. The Trans-Canada highway, which spans the length of our neighbor to the north, also will be added.
The announcement comes days after Ford said more than 10 million miles have been traveled using its Blue Cruise system, a competitor to Super Cruise. In its announcement, GM noted that drivers had used its system for 34 million miles, since its introduction in a limited selection of vehicles since 2017.
This large Super Cruise update will find its way onto VIP-equipped vehicles later this year for free. Currently, a number of Cadillac models including the CT4, CT5, Escalade, and Lyriq are equipped with the VIP architecture. It is also used on the current Chevy Tahoe, Suburban, and Silverado and the GMC equivalents of those vehicles. Super Cruise is not currently available in some of those trucks, though. The automaker did not comment on when other non-VIP vehicles equipped with Super Cruise, like the Chevy Bolt EV and Cadillac CT6 might get the new data.
Super Cruise originally covered just 130,000 miles of almost strictly interstates, although it later expanded to 200,000 miles of other highways before this latest update. As well as offering hands-free highway driving thanks to an eye-tracking system located on the steering column it can be activated while towing a trailer on certain vehicles. It can also pass slower-moving traffic automatically without a driver’s prompt in certain situations. The system uses LiDAR maps and real-time data from cameras and radar sensors to guide the vehicle down the highway. This is in contrast to Tesla’s autopilot that now uses strictly cameras in many vehicles.
GM’s Super Cruise is being followed up by Ultra Cruise, a system enabling “door-to-door” hands-free driving beyond just highways. It is set to debut in the new Cadillac Celestiq, a massive flagship sedan expected to cost around $300,000.
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