General Motors has announced that it will double the number of roads on which its Super Cruise hands-free driver assist technology will cover in the United States and Canada.
The technology relies on precision-surveyed, lidar-scanned road data to enable Super Cruise’s hands-free highway operation. GM uses survey vehicles to scan the roads, and Super Cruise-equipped vehicles compare the high-definition maps with live data gathered by onboard cameras, radar sensors, and GPS to accurately guide the vehicle on the road and within its lane. Designed as a driver assistance technology that requires human attention to operate, GM’s vehicles are outfitted with infrared cameras that monitor the driver to ensure that their eyes are on the road and that they are ready to regain control if conditions change.
Car owners have logged over 34 million miles of hands-free travel since the system launched in 2017, while GM has been busy expanding the Super Cruise highway network to around 200,000 miles of divided highways and interstates.
Because of the new addition of undivided highways to the database of high-resolution maps, that number will more than double to over 400,000 miles of Super Cruise-able roads by the end of this year. Many famous roads are depicted on the maps, including US Route 66, California’s Pacific Coast Highway 1, the Overseas Highway in Florida, the Trans-Canada Highway, and others.
The expanded road network will be available for vehicles built on GM’s Vehicle Intelligence Platform (VIP) electrical architecture and equipped with the second-generation Super Cruise. Vehicles with older architecture and older versions of Super Cruise may not receive the upgrade, but they will continue to operate normally on divided highways.
Over the next year, General Motors will expand the availability of Super Cruise across its brand portfolio, with the goal of offering the technology on 22 models by the end of 2023.