General Motors Corporation has sharply lowered its expectations for the commercial operation of autonomous driving systems and, according to insiders, has stopped development of the advanced Ultra Cruise autopilot .
GM announced the advanced Ultra Cruise autopilot in 2021; it was supposed to become a direct competitor to Tesla's FSD (Full Self-Driving) system and not be inferior to it in functionality. The announcement stated that Ultra Cruise will be able to cope with 95% of typical road scenarios (in the remaining 5% the driver will have to take control) and will work on two million roads in the USA and Canada with a total length of about 5.5 million km. It was initially planned that Ultra Cruise would appear on production cars in 2023, then the debut was postponed to 2024 — the first carrier of the advanced autopilot was supposed to be the luxurious Cadillac Celestiq liftback.
Alas, according to CNBC information obtained from two informed sources, there will be no Ultra Cruise autopilot, since GM management made the painful decision to stop its development. The unmanned Cruise division of the American corporation is currently in a deep crisis, as we talked about in detail last fall. This division appeared in the structure of GM in the middle of the last decade, when the leading players in the global auto business were euphoric about the prospects of full autopilot. By the beginning of this decade, this euphoria had passed, as it became clear that at the current level of social ethics and technology, complete autopilot was impossible.
Actually, Ultra Cruise was announced as a second-level autopilot according to the SAE classification, in which the driver is required to monitor the road at all times and be ready to take control at any time. The difference between Ultra Cruise and the Super Cruise autopilot, which GM has been equipping its models with since 2017, was its extended range: Super Cruise only works on highways in the United States and Canada with a total length of about 650,000 km. Super Cruise allows the driver to take his hands off the steering wheel, but the driver's gaze must be directed at the road at all times, which is monitored by a special interior camera.
For comparison, let's say that the Tesla FSD system was developed as a full-fledged autopilot no lower than level four , but in fact it works as a second-level autopilot — Tesla cannot and is unlikely to be able to legalize FSD at a higher level in the foreseeable future, since the system is currently unstable and creates a large number of emergency situations. GM management, apparently, does not want to risk the lives of its customers as desperately as Tesla, so the Ultra Cruise project is closed.
Instead of Ultra Cruise, the corporation will improve the simpler and more understandable Super Cruise autopilot, adding from time to time It has new functions, but the ability to cope with 95% of typical road scenarios is no longer a question; driving a complex route with city intersections and roundabouts from door to door without touching the steering wheel will be impossible in the coming years while driving a GM car.< br />
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