General Motors may be struggling when it comes to fully autonomous driving<\/a>, but the company is still feeling bullish about the future of hands-free driving. Today, it announced plans to expand its Super Cruise advanced driver-assist system, which allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel on certain roads, to cover nearly double the number of miles it did before. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Today, Super Cruise is operational on 400,000 miles of road<\/a> in the US and Canada. The company plans on adding around 40,000 miles of new roads every quarter over the course of two years, so by the end of 2025, Super Cruise will cover approximately 750,000 miles in the US and Canada. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Launched in 2017 with the Cadillac CT6, Super Cruise uses information from cameras and radar sensors embedded in the car, GPS data, and lidar mapping data to allow for hands-free driving and, in some cases, automatic lane changes. It pairs this capability with a driver-monitoring system that uses an infrared camera to make sure the driver is keeping their eyes on the road at all times in case Super Cruise needs to hand back control to the driver.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For years, Super Cruise was limited to divided highways that GM had laser mapped and approved for use.\u00a0But starting with its model year 2023 vehicles, the company started adding nondivided state and federal highways, which are sometimes called routes \u2014 main roads that connect smaller cities and towns. That includes popular roads like US Route 66, the Pacific Coast Highway, the Overseas Highway, and the Trans-Canada Highway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n GM says it will continue to add more routes and nondivided highways over the next few years to expand Super Cruise\u2019s operational domain. According to David Craig, chief of maps at GM, these will include \u201ctwo lane highways that are designed to connect the little towns, the more rural areas, the back woods areas where people take their RVs and campers and go hiking and hunting and camping.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cthe more rural areas, the back woods areas\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For its mapping data, GM contracts with a Michigan-based company called Dynamic Map Platform, which operates a fleet of vehicles that scan \u201cevery mile of road\u201d using lidar laser sensors, Craig said. Those maps are then fed back into GM\u2019s central system, which pushes out quarterly software updates to ensure each vehicle is operating with the most updated version of the map. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Super Cruise\u2019s capabilities will remain the same, and the system won\u2019t be able to handle any new driving scenarios, like traffic lights and four-way stops, said Jeff Miller, product manager for Super Cruise. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company recently stopped using its \u201cUltra Cruise\u201d brand<\/a>, which was intended to be its big Tesla competitor, deciding instead to merge the team that was working on it with its Super Cruise division. Ultra Cruise was intended to cover \u201c95 percent of driving scenarios\u201d on over 2 million miles of road. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n To be sure, GM says it is approaching the concept of hands-free driving as safely and cautiously as it can. Miller contrasts this approach with Tesla\u2019s Full Self-Driving, which still retains its status as a beta product despite being available to over 400,000 Tesla owners in North America. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not going to beta test on our customers,\u201d he said, \u201clike some other competitors do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Still, GM is chasing Tesla in some respects. The electric automaker\u2019s Full Self-Driving program is operational on local roads and residential streets and purports to handle more complex situations like roundabouts, traffic lights, and four-way stops. How well it handles these scenarios is open to debate, as regulators and safety experts continue to evaluate and study the technology. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n What is clear is that dozens of people have died while using Tesla Autopilot, and at least one person appears to have been killed in a crash<\/a> while using Full Self-Driving. Miller says that is not the case with Super Cruise. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cOur customers have driven Super Cruise completely hands-free 160 million miles,\u201d he said, \u201cand there has not been one accident attributed to Super Cruise.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Which is not to say there won\u2019t be an accident someday, especially as Super Cruise expands its map and becomes available to more customers. \u201cI mean, there could be,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe designed the system as robustly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n