Once it’s centered in the new lane you get a message confirming the maneuver was completed, and you can turn the indicator off. A graphic comes up on the Escalade’s all-digital instrumentation, showing it’s looking for a gap in traffic, and then eventually the SUV moves over. With Enhanced Super Cruise, you just have to hit the indicator. Pulling on the wheel, or indicating, would temporarily deactivate the system you’d manually change lane, wait for Super Cruise to reacquire its position, and then the light bar would turn green to show it was back in control of the steering. In fact, if you wanted to switch lanes, you’d need to overrule Super Cruise first. Super Cruise, however, has been limited to just the lane you’re in. Several cars have offered automatic lane changing for some time now, typically trigged by turning on the indicator and then allowing the vehicle to move you into the adjacent lane by itself. What Enhanced Super Cruise brings, though, is a feature that was long conspicuous by its absence. If that doesn’t grab you, Super Cruise escalates through more aggressive flashes, seat-buzzes, and sounds, then will eventually deactivate and the system can even bring the car to a safe halt, summoning help via OnStar. If you’re not – which typically means looking away for around 4-6 seconds, though that’s situation-dependent – a light bar built into upper half of the steering wheel flashes to bring your attention back. Super Cruise, however, has a camera mounted on the steering column, which tracks where you’re looking to make sure you’re paying sufficient attention to the road ahead. Most combinations of adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping rely on contact with the steering wheel to reassure the system you’re poised and ready to take over should it need to deactivate. The other big difference is where your hands have to be.
By combining those with a high-resolution GPS sensor, plus the other sensors on the vehicle, it gives Super Cruise much greater accuracy as to where it is on the road. Not on the Super Cruise car itself, but on a fleet of mapping vehicles that built up high-definition cartography of divided highways across the US and Canada. To get that lane-centering right, GM looked to LIDAR. For that reason, I’ll be referring to it as GM Super Cruise now, rather than Cadillac Super Cruise.Īt launch, Super Cruise could basically do two things: maintain your pace with traffic, and hold you centered in the lane. The 2021 Escalade is first, with Cadillac’s CT4 and CT5 sedans to follow plus the upcoming Lyriq EV, but it’s also spreading to other models under the General Motors umbrella, beginning with the upcoming Chevrolet Bolt EUV electric crossover. Super Cruise launched back in 2017 on the Cadillac CT6, but it’s only this year that it’s spreading to more models.