General Motors plans to offer “eyes-off” autonomous driving on its highest-selling, most profitable vehicles — big pickup trucks and SUVs — as it seeks fresh revenue streams from its heavy technology investments, the automaker announced Wednesday.
General Motors (Credits: Insurance Journal)
Last year, GM said it would offer autonomous highway driving in 2028 on the pricey but light-selling Cadillac Escalade IQ. This week it said it will expand the service to its pickups and other large SUVs — though no timeframe was specified for those models.
GM Targets Eyes-Off Autonomous Driving for Pickups, SUVs
Most current assisted-driving systems — including Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and GM’s own Super Cruise, which debuted about a decade ago — require the driver to stay attentive even when hands are off the wheel. True eyes-off systems, like Mercedes-Benz’s, remain limited to small areas at low speeds.
Sterling Anderson, GM’s chief product officer and a former Aurora autonomous-truck executive, said GM is building “an autonomous system that operates safely on highways that actually gives you your time back” — with expansion to other roads eventually. Some industry executives have cautioned that systems handing control back and forth raise thorny safety and liability questions.
Software Margins Are the Prize: GM’s In-House Bet
The strategy is as much about money as mobility. Automakers earn roughly 10% margins selling vehicles; PwC estimates software-related services can reach 30% to 40%. UBS estimates GM’s digital revenue will climb to $9.6 billion by 2036 from $3.2 billion this year, calling its digital capabilities an underappreciated opportunity.
GM is building a new software backbone in-house — a “central compute” model with one brain receiving smartphone-style remote updates, catching up with Tesla, Rivian and Chinese automakers. “The world opens up when you control the software across the system,” Anderson said. Inside GM, he jokingly calls the coming vehicles “robots.” An AI assistant also arrives on the Cadillac Lyriq SUV in the coming months.
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Source: Insurance Journal — read the full story there.
