March 24, 2026 - GM's Eyes-Off Driving Hits the Road

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for March 24, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry.  

In October 2025, General Motors announced that it would be launching a next-generation automated driving system on the Cadillac Escalade IQ beginning in 2028. This Level 3 system will allow drivers to go hands-free and eyes-free starting on highway driving situations as a follow-on to today's Super Cruise system that requires the driver to constantly supervise the system and be ready to take over. 

Mercedes-Benz was the first to launch a Level 3 system in the U.S. several years ago on the S-Class and EQS, but that system was recently discontinued. The Mercedes-Benz system, like similar systems from Honda and BMW, was limited to low-speed highway driving in traffic and only worked in daylight hours and only in California and Nevada. The new GM system is intended to be able to be used at all normal highway speeds, starting on divided highways as Super Cruise did when it launched in 2017. 

The new system is being developed by a team that includes GM's driver assist engineers and many of the engineers who formerly worked on the robotaxi program at Cruise in San Francisco. GM has begun on-road testing in Michigan and California, with more locations to follow as the test fleet grows to over 200 vehicles. GM has already collected more than 1 million training data points across 34 states, with some of that work being done by former Cruise robotaxi vehicles. 

GM will have a lot of work to do to prove that its new system is safe after the way the Cruise program came to an end. Unlike the Cruise robotaxis that were monitored by humans while operating autonomously, the Level 3 system will only rely on the person in the driver's seat. With the human no longer required to supervise the system, GM and other automakers will have to take full liability if a crash happens. 2028 is likely to be a big year for launching Level 3 systems with Ford, Rivian, Lucid, and several other automakers launching systems. 

Thanks for listening.