The $300,000 Cadillac Celestiq is the brand's bid to reclaim the "Standard of the World" title, and it will be equipped with what General Motors thinks will be the best driver assistance technology.
The sleek, electric four-door will be the first GM product to feature Ultra Cruise, which is a step above the Super Cruise system that's available today and is being developed to provide hands-off driving on most roads 95% of the time.
Super Cruise offers hands-off driving on 400,000 miles of pre-certified highways using radars, cameras, GPS and hyper-accurate maps while facial recognition tech ensures the driver is paying attention and ready to take control when required.
Jason Ditman, Ultra Cruise chief engineer, said Ultra Cruise will have a forward-looking lidar unit mounted behind the windshield that will work along with both short-range and long-range radars, long range cameras and over 20 sensors in total, to provide full coverage of what's around the car.
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The Celestiq's lidar will be installed behind the windshield. (Cadillac)
Ditman said the system won't be fully functional when the Celesitq launches, but that it will have all the hardware necessary and will continually be updated with new capabilities until it reaches the 95% operational goal.
Ultra Cruise provides 360-degrees of sensor coverage. (Cadillac)
"The worst thing we can do is put something out that doesn’t instill confidence," he said. "Customers will stop using the feature, and if customers stop using it, others won’t buy it."
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Ditman describes it as a destination-to-destination system that will be able to get the car from the front of one address to another and then will require the driver to take over to do things like pull into a driveway or find a parking space in a lot. He also expects to restrict its use in certain situations, like negotiating very complex intersections and roundabouts.
Ultra Cruise will interact with drivers through lights and graphics. (Cadillac)
Ditman is very clear that it is a Level 2 assistance system, which requires the driver to monitor its operation, and isn't being designed to provide eyes-off the road operation. Tesla's controversial Full Self-Driving system is also a Level 2 system, but the company has made varying suggestions that it will be capable of fully autonomous operation one day. Ford last week announced the launch of a new division called Latitude AI that is working on eyes-off driver assist technology, but has not offered a time frame for when it expects it to be ready.
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GM's separate Cruise company runs fully-autonomous vehicles in a ride-hailing service that uses an even more advanced sensor suite and is monitored from a central operations center, but the technology is different from what's being used for Ultra Cruise.