Imagine sending your car to pick up groceries or dry cleaning to avoid bumper-to-bumper traffic. This is exactly what General Motors promises the Cadillac Escalade IQ will deliver in 2028.
It’s a far-off goal, but today GM announced it’s expanding autonomous highway driving to its full-size SUVs and light-duty pickups. GM says it’s building a foundation for fully autonomous cars, with over 1.2 billion hands-free miles driven by its existing Super Cruise users, feeding real-world data to frontier AI and machine learning.
To reach full autonomy, the Cadillac Escalade IQ will also be GM’s most intelligent car ever, featuring a new central compute unit that offers 40x more compute capacity than current vehicles and equivalent power of 35 laptops. Additionally, this new CCU is fully connected to every system in the car so it can tell which windows are open, your tire pressure, when oil changes are needed, and everything in between.
OnStar AI
GM also announced it is relaunching OnStar as a full-on AI assistant available in both new vehicles and a smartphone app.
The new OnStar AI lets you command it like any assistant or chatbot by summoning it with Hey OnStar. From there, you could use OnStar to adjust the temperature, map a route for your road trip, and help figure out what error code your vehicle is beeping or flashing at you. Beyond vehicle-centric tasks, GM demoed how OnStar can help you plan dinners for the week or pick a halloween costume for couples.
Beyond vehicle-centric tasks, GM demoed how OnStar can help you plan dinners for the week or pick a halloween costume for couples.
OnStar AI will launch first on the 2027 Cadillac Lyriq with an over-the-air update in the coming months, then roll out to more GM vehicles.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam