In an era where the entire auto industry is advancing towards the ultimate goal of fully autonomous driving, recent headlines about General Motors’ decision to discontinue its Ultra Cruise advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) seemed contradictory to the industry trend. Despite facing challenges with its electric vehicle and robotaxi initiatives, it seemed puzzling for GM to abandon this goal altogether. However, a GM official clarified that Ultra Cruise is about to merge with the more well-known Super Cruise.
“GM is not scaling back its advanced driver assistance (ADAS) programs,” GM spokesperson Aimee Ridella told InsideEVs. “We have reallocated our ADAS-focused resources to bring even more capability to Super Cruise under one recognizable consumer brand.”
This clarification comes after initial reports that suggested the Ultra Cruise program was being terminated, which is not entirely true. The main focus of the original CNBC story was GM’s decision to concentrate on enhancing the current Super Cruise system’s capabilities rather than maintaining two separate, similarly named systems.
It’s important to understand how we reached this point. Super Cruise was first introduced in 2017 on the Cadillac CT6 luxury sedan and has evolved as a Level 2 semi-autonomous technology over the years. GM has continued to upgrade Super Cruise and extend its availability to various gas and electric models. The latest version of Super Cruise includes features like automatic lane-changing and is widely considered one of the leading ADAS technologies on the market.
GM’s announcement of the Ultra Cruise system in 2021 aimed to build upon the foundation laid by Super Cruise. One of the key differences was the addition of Lidar technology, making it a Level 2+ system intended to “enable hands-free driving in 95% of all driving scenarios.” Despite its original plans to debut in 2023, Ultra Cruise did not launch as expected. Subsequently, recognizing the internal logic of combining two separate teams working on different solutions, GM opted to merge Ultra Cruise with Super Cruise. This move allows GM to offer higher and better “levels” of Super Cruise as new, more automated vehicles emerge.
This decision was also driven by marketing considerations, as Super Cruise enjoys broader consumer awareness compared to Ultra Cruise. GM is not walking away from advanced automated driving. Instead, it is leveraging a brand that is better recognized by most consumers.
In conclusion, GM’s decision to focus on Super Cruise does not signify a retreat from advanced automated driving but rather an effort to align with the brand that is more familiar to consumers.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com