General Motors says its hands-off, eyes-off Super Cruise driving system will expand to nearly every vehicle it sells, pickups and crossovers included. Until now the eyes-off version was announced only for the Escalade IQ, so this is a much wider rollout, though the source gives no dates or trim details. Eyes-off means the driver would not have to watch the road continuously, a step beyond today's Super Cruise, which lets you take your hands off the wheel but expects you to keep watching.
The news came at this year's GM Forward event, where executives also introduced OnStar AI. Sterling Anderson, GM's head of product, said the company is testing the technology for 1 million miles (1.6 million km) a month, split between virtual and real-world driving.
A car that does errands
Anderson's pitch goes past driving. He told Ars Technica the goal is a vehicle that can "go and do things for you," and he was quick to say he doesn't mean an Optimus-style laundry robot. His example: you work late, get in the car, and it remembers a restaurant you like and offers to place a pick-up order, ready when you arrive.
OnStar AI is also meant to explain the car itself. If you hear an unfamiliar beep, you could ask what it was, and be told it was, say, a speed limit warning. GM says that because the assistant is trained specifically on the vehicle, it can be built in more deeply than a general model such as Google's Gemini.
Local brains, optional cloud
Thanks to onboard computing announced at last year's event, much of the processing can happen in the car with no cloud connection. A connection could still help, for instance by crowdsourcing road conditions: if cars ahead of you in snow have had traction control events, you could get an early warning. Automakers and suppliers have promised that kind of system for some time, so treat it as a plan until it ships.
GM also wants to keep households inside its own ecosystem. In one scenario, the AI notices your spouse's GM car is closer to the child's practice and swaps your errands. Even the reporter called it a very specific use case.
The trust problem
Anderson returned to trust several times. He argued people relate to their cars differently than to phones: a phone suggesting your favorite restaurant might feel creepy, but a car doing it in context could feel acceptable. That is his view, not a finding, and he conceded that trust must be earned and is hard to win back once broken.
Still unclear: critical details including the launch timeline, which models get eyes-off Super Cruise, what it will cost, and what data OnStar AI collects to make those suggestions remain unannounced.
Sources
- 1.Forget "Malaise 2.0," GM says it's still all-in on EVs and autonomy · Ars Technica
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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