1938 Cadillac Imperial V16 Series 90 Limo on 2040-cars

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Super Cruise’s failsafes

Even though Super Cruise is not a fully autonomous system, it incorporates redundancies like those used in aircraft to ensure failsafe operation. Before taking off on a 700-mile, 11-hour test drive of the system — and putting my life in its hands without my hands on the wheel — I sat down with Daryl Wilson, lead development engineer for Super Cruise, to get a deep dive into the system and its critical safety backups. Autoblog: First, what makes Super Cruise different from similar systems? Wilson: The key differentiator for Super Cruise is hand-free driving. It's an industry first in that respect. Our competitors require the driver at minimum to place their hands on the wheel with some frequency to ensure that the car knows that the driver is there. We don't. Two key technologies allow us to do this. One is our Driver Attention System, which is our methodology for making sure the driver is engaged with the vehicle and engaged with the road. This is a driver assist system, not a fully autonomous system. So it requires driver engagement. We use an infrared camera that constantly monitors the driver's face to determine the direction they're looking. We're looking for the driver to be what we call on-road — not on the center stack, not to left or right or down. That's all done by the tracking of the face. We also track that the eyes are open. It's infrared because at night you need to illuminate the face and you can't be shining a light into the driver's face. Then we have our lidar mapping that provides a foundation for control and redundancy to ensure safe performance. Autoblog: How does the mapping act as a redundant feature? Wilson: This system is only for use on divided, controlled access highways. What I mean by a divided highway is something more than a painted line between you and oncoming traffic. Whether that's a grassy area in between the lanes or a concrete barrier, anything that separates you from oncoming traffic. That's the divided highway part. The controlled access part is entrance ramps and exit ramps. Not with roads that cross at grade, with traffic crossing at the same level. To do that we geofenced these roads to ensure that operation is only allowed in these conditions. We don't just recommend you use it there; we ensure that you only use it there.

C7 Corvette won't spawn new Cadillac XLR [w/video]

Between the new 2014 Chevy Corvette Stingray and the even newer Cadillac Elmiraj Concept shown off at Pebble Beach, we were already expecting some sort of chatter of a Cadillac XLR redux. During an in-depth C7 Corvette discussion with Tadge Juechter, the car's chief engineer, Fox News asked if a Corvette-based, Bowling Green-built Cadillac will be built off the C7. Non-spoiler alert: the answer is no.
Juechter says that General Motors has "no intent" on transforming this car into a Cadillac product since the C7 has been optimized for the Corvette buyer, a consumer that's generally a different sort of person than a Cadillac intender who might also be cross-shopping a Mercedes-Benz SL-Class or BMW 6 Series.
While we're not ready to write off a future XLR altogether, we assume that the Corvette Cadillac experiment is most likely never going to happen again. The interview with Juechter is posted below, but the XLR discussion comes in at the 9:00 mark.

2016 Cadillac CTS-V First Drive [w/video]

A million insects lost their lives today. Boxelder bugs and mayflies making the ultimate sacrifice in Elkhart Lake, their carapaces no buffer against a rocketing rectangle of safety glass. Their bodies gorily streaking into spangles along the diamond-faceted face of the Cadillac CTS-V. Road America is a four-mile ribbon of pavement snaking its way through the emerald center of the country's northern heartland. Since the 1950s it's seen uncountable fields of diverse racing machinery rocket over its hills and around its 14 corners. I would imagine that on those occasions the tramping of onlookers and hubbub of vehicles, both competitive and commonplace, would dissuade a great number of our six-legged friends from making their way onto the track. But today it's just me turning laps. Inconceivably just one journalist, driving the baddest roadgoing Cadillac ever made, on one of the loveliest circuits America has ever carved out. So big-winged bugs made it out to me in a vast array and a tragic sum, and I drilled through them oblivious to anything but one of the greatest days of driving I've ever had. Cadillac has turned its CTS-V from a performance sedan to a monster. For 2016 Cadillac has turned its CTS-V from a performance sedan to a monster worthy of the carnage described above. The words "epic" and "awesome" are hilariously overused on the Internet, but in the case of the CTS-V's 6.2-liter supercharged V8, their literal meanings are fitting. The capacity to produce 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque is astounding. Feeling those outputs come to growling life under my foot arch, uncorks different reactions in my brain as the day wears on: first trepidation, next cautious optimism, finally red-eyed bloodlust. A glance at the power and torque curves will show you that the charged V8 behaves more like a naturally aspirated thing than a turbo'd on/off switch. Peak torque arrives at 3,600 rpm, horsepower at 6,400, giving the engine lovely, linear power delivery. Even with top torque happening near the middle of the tach, there's no small amount of the stuff when the engine first spins up, so launching all 4,145 pounds of Detroit iron still feels exotic. Launching all 4,145 pounds of Detroit iron still feels exotic. On the roads around Wisconsin, using all of the available power is hardly advisable, but I have no trouble driving this fast car slowly (sort of).