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GM To Offer Car That Will Almost Drive Itself

Cars that can talk to each other and almost drive themselves at freeway speeds are just two years away from the showroom, according to General Motors executives. The company announced Sunday that the semi-autonomous system for freeways will be an option on an unidentified new 2017 Cadillac that goes on sale in the summer of 2016. In addition, another 2017 Cadillac, the CTS, will be equipped with radio transmitters and receivers that will let it communicate with other cars, sharing data such as location, speed and whether the driver is applying the brakes. The announcements were made Sunday at the opening of the Intelligent Transportation Society World Congress being held in Detroit this week. They are part of a barrage of similar declarations that are expected from other companies throughout the week as the industry shows off progress toward self-driving and safer cars. The freeway system, dubbed "Super Cruise," uses cameras and radar to keep the car in the center of a lane and also stay a safe distance behind cars in front of it. The system will bring the car to a complete stop if traffic halts without driver action, and it can keep the car going in stop-and-go traffic. Other automakers, such as Mercedes-Benz, now offer similar systems that work at low speeds, but GM says it's the first to announce a system that operates at highway speeds. Others could have freeway systems in two years, though. "If the mood strikes you on the high-speed road from Barstow, California, to Las Vegas, you can take a break from the wheel and pedals and let the car do the work," CEO Mary Barra said in remarks prepared for the conference's keynote address on Sunday. But GM said the car still won't drive itself, and the company is working on a system to monitor drivers to make sure they're still paying attention. Details of that system weren't released. "Sensing technology is not yet to the point where the driver can check out," said John Capp, GM's director of global safety strategy. "This is a level of automation that can be done, that is feasible." The new Cadillac that will get Super Cruise hasn't been officially announced yet. But executives have hinted that GM will build a big rear-drive Caddy to lead its lineup in the coming years. Also Sunday, the Michigan Department of Transportation announced that it will partner with GM, Ford Motor Co.

2019 Cadillac Escalade ESV Drivers' Notes Review | Old, but not antiquated

When the Cadillac Escalade debuted 20 years ago, car-based crossovers were just getting their start. The Escalade was and still is basically a Chevy Tahoe with new styling and a nicer interior. That's especially true today, as our test car has an interior that looks like it was lifted straight from a Cadillac CTS rather than a Chevy Silverado. Crossovers may be more comfortable and fuel efficient, but they can't hold a candle to towing and payload capabilities of a body-on-frame SUV. If you need to haul seven people and a full-size Airstream in quiet comfort, few options are better than the Escalade. This week, our tester was a long-wheelbase Escalade ESV. That means substantially more room both behind the third row and with the seats folded. The Premium Luxury trim sits in the middle of the lineup, but it still comes with a lot of goodies. Features include a Bose audio system, a digital instrument cluster, a heads-up display, heated and cooled leather seats, a heated steering wheel, tri-zone climate control, Magnetic Ride Control and a stout 6.2-liter V8. Options include upgraded leather for $2,000 and polished 22-inch wheels for $600. All in, this Escalade was just shy of $100,000. Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore: The Escalade is arguably Cadillac's best vehicle. It's a bold, body-on-frame SUV that feels decadently all-American. The Escalade is still contemporary even though it's been years since the ute has had a major redesign. I enjoyed a couple nights in this luxury bruiser. The V8 is powerful, and the 10-speed is a smart improvement. The command seating position is always welcome for me. The interior is nicely laid out, and the materials all look and feel upscale. Not a huge fan of Cadillac's touchscreen (no longer officially called CUE), but it seems to be getting better or I'm getting used to it. Love the Escalade's exterior design. It's dramatic, imposing and gives Cadillac something that's a true style-leader. All that being said, I'll be interested to see how Caddy iterates the Escalade. The Lincoln Navigator is an excellent product and a worthy adversary. Cadillac would be wise to keep its SUV flagship fresh. Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder: I was not excited to get into the Escalade. This is really not my cup of tea. I used to love the Chevy Suburban, but that fondness has languished as my tastes evolved as these huge vehicles have modernized, losing the charm that drew me to them when I was younger.

Teaching autonomous vehicles to drive like (some) humans

While I love driving, I can't wait for fully autonomous vehicles. I have no doubt they'll reduce car accidents, 94 percent of which are caused by human error, leading to more than 37,000 road deaths in the U.S. last year. And if it means I can fly home at night in winter and get safely shuttled to my house an hour-plus away — and not have to endure a typical white-knuckle drive in the dark with torrential rain and blinding spray from 18-wheelers on Interstate 84 — sign me up. Autonomous technology will also take some of the stress, tedium and fatigue out of long highway drives, as I recently discovered while testing Cadillac Super Cruise. AVs are also supposed to eventually help increase traffic flow and reduce gridlock. But according to a recent Automotive News article, as the first wave of AVs are being tested on public roads, they're having the opposite effect. Part of the problem is they drive too cautiously and are programmed to strictly follow the written rules of the road rather than going with the flow of traffic. "Humans violate the rules in a safe and principled way, and the reality is that autonomous vehicles in the future may have to do the same thing if they don't want to be the source of bottlenecks," Karl Iagnemma, CEO of self-driving technology developer NuTonomy, told Automotive News. "You put a car on the road which may be driving by the letter of the law, but compared to the surrounding road users, it's acting very conservatively." I get it that, like teen drivers, AVs need a ramp up period to learn the unwritten rules of the road and that a skeptical public has to be convinced of the technology's safety. But this is where I become less of a champion on AVs, since where I live in the Pacific Northwest we already have more than our share of overly cautious human drivers. Since moving here 12 years ago, I've found it's an interesting paradox that a region famous for its strong coffee, where you'd think most drivers would be jacked up on caffeine, is also the home to annoyingly measured motorists. As an auto-journo colleague living in Seattle so aptly put it: "People in the Pacific Northwest drive as if they have nowhere to go." If you drive like me and always have somewhere to go — and usually are in a hurry to get there — it's absolutely maddening.