Showing posts with label gm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gm. Show all posts

Tuesday

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Thousands of modified Chevrolet Bolt cars may hit the roads next year, as part of a major deployment by General Motors to test its self-driving system on public roads.


GM, along with ridesharing app Lyft, will test the cars and possibly pick up members of the public, similar to Uber’s self-driving program in Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to a report from Reuters.


The program will supposedly be split between Lyft and GM’s car-sharing service, Maven.


The deployment of thousands of self-driving vehicles on public roads may improve the public’s perception of the technology. It could also boost GM’s standing in the self-driving industry, where it is currently perceived as behind Google’s Waymo, Tesla, and Uber.


GM has not commented on the report, Lyft also declined to comment.


GM has made a few major moves to ensure it does not fall behind in the self-driving race, including the near $1 billion acquisition of Cruise Automation, the $500 million paid for a minority stake in Lyft, and new billion dollar research facilities.


See Also: General Motors begins self-driving tests on Michigan public roads


Even with these major investments, GM has yet to show the same levels of progress and sophistication that its self-driving rivals are capable of. It does, however, have a few dozen Chevrolet Bolt cars on San Francisco roads, which are reaching Level 3 autonomy.


GM has not been as detailed in its plans for the future as Ford and Tesla, who have both said they want to achieve Level 4 autonomy in the next few years. This major deployment of test cars could be a signal that GM wants to remove humans from the driving experience, replacing car ownership with rental and taxi services.

Thursday

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Cadillac previewed the next step in semi-autonomous technology at the New York Auto Show this week, improving its adaptive cruise control safety features.


The new Super Cruise system, which will be available in the Cadillac CT6 this fall, is able to alert the driver when they stop paying attention to the road and ensure that an accident similar to Tesla’s first autonomous fatality doesn’t happen in a Cadillac.


See Also: A quarter of all U.S. travel could be electric and driverless by 2030


Instead of packing the steering wheel with sensors to recognize when the driver has let go, Cadillac has added head tracking sensors to make sure the driver pays attention.


The ‘Driver Attention System’ will alert the driver if they look away for too long, and the system has a series of alerts that escalate the longer attention is diverted. These alerts include voice, noise alerts and haptic chair rumbles.


Ignore me and I’ll shut down


If a driver ignores all alerts, the car will turn hazard lights on and shut down. It will also alert the emergency services. Unlike other cruise control systems, the driver needs to only look back at the road to turn off the alerts, they do not need to hold the wheel.


Another addition to Cadillac’s Super Cruise is a geo-locator that ensures cruise control only works on divided, limited-access highways. It comes after the first fatal accident involving a Tesla’s Model S owner that had AutoPilot active last year. The Model S did not recognize the white van that had pulled out of an intersection and the driver was not paying attention to the road.


General Motors is one of the few major automakers that are committed to semi-autonomous tech inside of cars. Ford, its main U.S. rival, has said it will skip Level 3 autonomy, which is considered a slightly more advanced form of cruise control, to push straight for Level 5, the highest level of autonomous driving.

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