General Motors is preparing a major step beyond today’s hands-off driver assistance. The automaker says it plans to launch an automated driving system in 2028 that lets drivers take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel, starting with the Cadillac Escalade IQ.
A highway-first system built on Super Cruise
The announcement came Wednesday at GM Forward in New York City. GM described the coming product as a more capable system built on Super Cruise, its existing hands-off advanced driver assistance system.
Super Cruise launched in 2017 and is now available in 23 vehicle models. GM says it can be used on about 600,000 miles of highway, which gives the company a broad foundation for the next step in driver assistance.
The new system will also begin on highways. Unlike Super Cruise, however, GM says the future product is intended to allow both eyes-off and hands-off operation under the conditions where it is designed to work.
What GM says will change
The planned system will use lidar, radar, and cameras for perception. That sensor mix is central to how GM is positioning the product: not just as a hands-off feature, but as a system with greater automated driving capability.
GM CEO Mary Barra said during the event that GM would roll out its eyes-off product faster than it did its hands-off Super Cruise ADAS. The company is also setting expectations around where the system will operate and when a driver may still need to step in.
Baris Cetinok, GM’s senior vice president of software and services, said the eyes-off product will work on highways that GM hasn’t mapped. He added that the system will only require human takeover for things like off-ramps, and can handle emergencies and sudden incidents.
Human intervention should not be the escape hatch for sudden incidents.
That distinction matters. A system that asks for driver takeover only in limited situations is different from one that depends on the driver as the immediate backup for unexpected road events.
Cruise technology is being folded into GM’s roadmap
GM is using experience from engineers who worked at Cruise, its now shuttered autonomous vehicle technology subsidiary, to improve the new system’s capabilities. GM shut down Cruise, its commercial robotaxi business, in December 2024, then absorbed the subsidiary and combined it with its own driver assistance work.
Over the last year, GM has also rehired several Cruise engineers as it pursues fully autonomous personal vehicles. The company says it is feeding Cruise’s technology stack into its next-generation driver assistance and autonomy programs.
That stack includes AI models trained on five million driverless miles and a simulation framework running virtual test scenarios. For GM, the robotaxi work is being redirected toward personal vehicles rather than a standalone commercial robotaxi operation.
Sterling Anderson, GM’s executive vice president of global product and former co-founder of AV startup Aurora Innovation, framed robotaxis as a sensible starting point when autonomous vehicle hardware was more expensive and high utilization was needed.
Robotaxi as a proof of concept when you start makes a lot of sense.
Anderson said the industry is now in a different position because hardware costs have come down. He argued that GM has the install base and manufacturing capacity to put systems into much larger volumes and at much lower costs.
Had the industry had low-cost systems and a huge install base and manufacturing capacity to begin with, we probably all would have gone for personal autonomous vehicles to begin with.
Where GM would stand against rivals
In the U.S., Mercedes is currently the only automaker with a commercially available hands-off, eyes-off system. Such systems fall under SAE’s Level 3 of automation, meaning the automated system can drive itself under certain conditions but might still require a human to take over.
Mercedes’ Drive Pilot is only available on certain mapped highways in California and Nevada, and only functions in heavy, low-speed traffic. GM is signaling a different approach by saying its system will work on highways that GM hasn’t mapped.
Other automakers are also pursuing similar capabilities. Stellantis unveiled its own Level 3 system earlier this year, but has put the launch on hold. Tesla has been trying to “solve full self-driving” with cameras and neural networks for years, though its Autopilot and FSD systems still require the driver to keep their eyes on the road.
Why the 2028 target matters
If GM brings an eyes-off, hands-off driving system to market in 2028, it could move ahead of most automakers unless another company arrives first. The starting point, according to GM, will be the Cadillac Escalade IQ, with highway operation as the initial use case.
The plan also shows how GM is reshaping its autonomy strategy after Cruise. Instead of continuing with a commercial robotaxi business, the company is applying Cruise engineering, AI models, simulation work, and driverless-mile experience to personal vehicles.
The result, if GM delivers what it described, would be a new layer above Super Cruise: a driver assistance system designed not only to steer and manage highway driving hands-free, but to let the driver look away under supported conditions.