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Cadillac still planning for big things in China

Despite some hiccups, China remains the auto industry's great hope for new vehicle sales, with significant sales gains and a huge upside. Nowhere is that hope more fervent than at General Motors, which offers eight different marques in the Asian nation. China has been GM's single biggest market the last three years running, and is unlikely to give up that title anytime soon. Yet its premiere brand, Cadillac, has remained essentially stagnant, selling just 30,000 units in China last year. That's in a segment where sales of luxury vehicles has outpaced that of the larger Chinese market. So what gives?
According to Cadillac officials Autoblog spoke with in China this week at the Shanghai Motor Show, it's been a problem of product - they haven't had the right ones. Displacement taxation issues, import tariffs and currency fluctuations have all conspired to make the brand's products less appealing than they might otherwise have been. But GM is stepping on the gas with Cadillac, and executives are eyeballing 100,000 sales by 2016 - more than triple the Wreath and Crest's current volume. And the expectations for the brand only get more ambitious from there - they're shooting for 10 percent of the luxury market by 2020. Bob Socia, President of GM China, promises that there will be a new Caddy launched in the market each year from now through 2016 and most will be built in China. Characterizing the company's efforts to revive the brand's fortunes as a "relaunch" of sorts, Cadillac also figures to gain dealers as GM expands its sales outlet footprint westward.
New products like a made-in-China XTS sedan (with a market-specific 2.0-liter four-cylinder to avoid heavy displacement taxes) will help, and Socia hinted that the ATS sport sedan could be next in line for in-country production. The SRX crossover - currently the brand's best-selling model in China - will also likely get a long look for future local production when the next-generation model is introduced. In the meantime, Cadillac unveiled the Escalade ESV Hybrid (shown above) as its latest model addition to capitalize on the market's white-hot luxury SUV segment.

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.

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.