General Motors is throwing another salvo in the self-driving wars.
In 2028, the automaker announced today, it will launch what it calls a “discovery” driving system in the electric Cadillac Escalade IQ. In practice, this means that a driver navigating authorized and mapped highways will be able to do basically anything they want behind the wheel. Snacking, answering emails, catching up on their shows, turning around to yell at the kids in the back. Even sleep, perhaps, as long as they wake up when they’ve reached the exit ramp. (If they don’t, the car will find a safe place to stop, GM says.)
The new system marks a collaboration between the team responsible for General Motors’ eight-year-old Super Cruise, an advanced driver assistance system that the automaker today described as “hands-free” on some roads, and Cruise, a robotaxi subsidiary that competed with Waymo before GM cut off its funding in 2024. They are trying to bring some version of self-driving systems to people’s personally owned cars. drivers
Unlike Tesla’s fully autonomous (supervised) driving system, which relies only on cameras to make decisions, GM’s new “discovery” feature will use lidar, radar and cameras. It will make it clear when the driver is expected to pay attention again through a combination of tactile, audible and visual alerts, says Sterling Anderson, GM’s executive vice president of global product and chief product officer. (He co-founded the self-driving truck company Aurora and played a key role in building Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system.) “If the last few decades have taught us anything, it’s that you can’t expect an inattentive driver to be ready to take over at a moment’s notice. You just can’t,” he says.
The announcement of the “discovery” system was one of a series of AI-adjacent revelations from GM on Wednesday, the latest sign that automakers are willing to compete to see who can best fit the buzzy technology to wheels. Next year, GM says, its vehicles will include Google Gemini chatbot integration that should be able to help drivers more naturally ask their car to help them, say, navigate to a coffee shop near work. At some point in the future, GM says, it will introduce personalized artificial intelligence that will retain drivers’ personal preferences (perhaps their favorite driving music, temperature or mirror position) and, for example, alert them when their car needs maintenance. All of this will be enabled by a new centralized IT platform, which will also debut in 2028.
