UPDATE: Tesla Busted

There is an amazing, revolutionary product on the global automotive market that was developed and made in the U.S., but which gets precious little attention from the media or industry pundits.? It is General Motors’ Super Cruise hands-free driving system. (Honorable mention to Ford Motor Company's Blue Cruise! - Top CR pick.)

There is a competing all-American solution from a company called Tesla which has been implicated in multiple fatal crashes. Tesla has now agreed to recall and update its self-driving systems to correct multiple shortcomings that have contributed to those crashes. Recall details: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCLRPT-23V838-8276.PDF

Most people now understand, thanks to years of television commercials, that Super Cruise allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel as long as they are paying attention.? The system is now available on a couple dozen GM models across all of the company’s brands, has shipped in more than 100,000 GM vehicles, and operates on more than 400,000 miles of designated roads.

The system’s emergence in 2017 on select Cadillac models was briefly heralded but certainly was not front-page news.? At launch, the system was only allowed to function on 130,000 miles of designated highways.? That limitation clearly set Super Cruise apart from competing “autopilot” solutions from companies such as Tesla.? From its earliest days, Tesla’s autopilot hands-free driving system though intended for limited use was routinely used beyond its intended operating environment. (The current recall is intended to correct this flaw.)

I remember more than one Tesla driver activating autopilot (and, later, so-called “full self-driving” – FSD) on regular surface streets and secondary roads with surprising and sometimes alarming results.? This is the difference, of course, between Super Cruise and Tesla Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.

GM’s Super Cruise has something of a belt-and-suspenders approach to safety in relation to semi-automated driving.? The use of the hands-free system is only available on specifically designated roads – 400,000+ miles of mostly, but not exclusively, divided highways.? In other words, the application is geofenced.

Super Cruise also relies on a driver monitor using infra-red light to track head position along with sophisticated algorithms to determine whether the driver is attentive to the driving task.? Additionally, GM has used LiDAR data to enhance the precision of the underlying map used to guide the vehicle along with multiple layers of GPS positioning enhancement.

As if this were not enough, GM has also taken responsibility with the help of partners to identify road hazards and construction that might impede or obstruct Super Cruise-equipped vehicles.? And obstructions that emerge in real-time, such as emergency vehicles, must also be identified and avoided.

John Voelcker reported in Car & Driver earlier this year: “GM told?Car and Driver?it has reported to NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) ‘a handful of crashes involving Super Cruise–equipped vehicles’ but that none of those vehicles had the system engaged at the time of the crash.”

Compare GM’s approach to Tesla’s.? Tesla’s camera- and steering wheel torque-based driver monitor is intended to ensure drivers keep their hands on the wheel at all times but it is easily and routinely defeated by consumers.? Tesla vehicles in autopilot or full self-driving mode continue to collide with emergency vehicles stopped on highways.? Tesla has yet to explain incidents of phantom stopping.? And Tesla has so far refused to geofence Autopilot or FSD – either of which can be engaged on any roadway at any time. The current NHTSA recall is intended to address at least some of these failures.

This may explain Tesla’s disappointing Autopilot performance to date – now implicated in 40 “fatal or serious crashes” since 2016, according to a report earlier this week in the Washington Post.? The Post reports on the regulatory conflict between the National Transportation Safety Board, which called (as early as 2016) for limits on where systems like Tesla’s autopilot could be activated, and NHTSA, which continues to investigate the company but has confined its Tesla “sanctions” to multiple recalls which Tesla has generally addressed with over-the-air software updates.

"Tesla Drivers Run Autopilot Where it is Not Intended - with Deadly Consequences" -https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/10/tesla-autopilot-crash/

There’s one truly revolutionary, home grown, all-American, automotive technology on the road today.? It’s changing the industry.? And it’s not from Tesla.? It’s Super Cruise – the belt-and-suspenders approach to safe hands-free driving.