We are creeping into an era where driving will be considered a monotonous activity, dare we say – a chore. Robots or AI will not replace drivers very soon, but automakers are racing to make cars that can navigate roads by themselves. The fight is entirely on, and General Motors wants us to understand everything about it thoroughly.
Around one year ago, General Motors President Mark Reuss published a lengthy piece on a social network advocating for a "safe approach" to self-driving deployment. The executive said the company's goal in this sector is to reduce crashes to zero. The plan was to "eliminate human driver error while creating more time and space for what truly matters in life." It was an ingenious way to say that people may behave recklessly while behind the wheel, whereas a combination of hardware and software might not.
General Motors is also one of the companies with excellent access to actual self-driving vehicles. It owns Cruise, a robotaxi entity with numerous driverless cars on the road that take people from one point to another in many US cities. It's also involved with other companies attempting to do the same in other countries. Thus, GM gained a lot of expertise in the autonomous vehicle industry.
One could even argue that it has more valuable data and better programming than Tesla, which keeps pushing Full Self-Driving Beta as the next best thing in terms of cars that can drive themselves.
However, recent studies and some San Francisco protests showed that not everyone is so eager to accept cars don't need their owners to drive them any longer.
AAA, for example, published the results of a survey a couple of months ago in which they underlined that 68% of those who answered were afraid of self-driving vehicles. The organization sounded the alarm over automakers needing to "build public trust and knowledge surrounding emerging vehicle technology."
However, this sentiment is understandable. Considering the news about unfinished and surprisingly expensive software being tested on public roads and the multiple reports about more and more Americans losing their lives on the road, it's unsurprising that people might not want to deal with robots as well.
Photo: General Motors
General Motors wants to make bank on its investments in robotaxis and self-driving technology, even though it started shy with its hands-free Super Cruise advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS). The plan is to continue spending money in this direction and transform the software into Ultra Cruise, which will allow drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel on nearly any public road with markings. But unlike Tesla's camera-based FSD Beta, GM will use radar and laser scanning (LiDAR) to make this happen.
Interestingly, the American auto giant isn't ready to call Ultra Cruise a Level 4 or 5 autonomous driving system, as the SAE J3016 standard defines it. For now, the brand says the evolved Super Cruise will be a Level 2 ADAS. That means the driver is always responsible for what's happening and must assume control of the vehicle when prompted or when they notice something's off.
To help everyone understand the progress in the self-driving vehicle sector, GM launched the "Hands Free, Eyes On" education program. The automaker will publish relevant content on its social media channels and website. These upcoming posts will help anyone better understand the difference between driver-assistance technologies and complete autonomy.
"We want customers to be assured of what we are doing to safely deploy these technologies," said GM vice president Scott Miller.
Car shows on TV and his father's Fiat Tempra may have been Florin's early influences, but nowadays he favors different things, like the power of an F-150 Raptor. He'll never be able to ignore the shape of a Ferrari though, especially a yellow one. Full profile
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