With Ford opting to somewhat eschew Level 4 and 5 autonomy in favor of Level 2 and 3, its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving assist feature continues to evolve, adding new features and accumulating accolades along the way. Meanwhile, even as Ford’s cross-town rival, General Motors, continues to deal with the fallout from a scandal related to its own self-driving commercial entity – Cruise – its BlueCruise-like feature dubbed Super Cruise keeps evolving as well. In fact, Super Cruise just expanded its hands-free coverage in North America by a whopping 350k miles, according to GM Authority.
Previously, Super Cruise covered around 400,000 miles of U.S. and Canadian roads, but now, GM is nearly doubling that number – to a new total of 750,000 miles. In addition to highways, however, this update also includes some two-lane roads and and even routes that go through smaller towns and rural areas, notably. These extra miles aren’t being added all at once, but will roll out gradually via over-the-air updates between now and 2025.
In addition to this mileage expansion, Super Cruise is also gaining some other updates, such as the ability to navigate minor highways between townships and small cities – which will be needed given the aforementioned additions – along with sections that contain cross traffic and intersections. This is notable because Super Cruise can detect crossing traffic, pedestrians, or other obstacles, and then take action as needed to avoid a collision.
Regardless, this addition figures to come with its own unique set of challenges, as is the case with BlueCruise already. Drivers must be ready to take over at any time, and that’s also true of these Super Cruise updates, which can switch control back to the driver automatically if the system determines that it’s necessary.
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Thank you, GM.