Is General Motors Company (GM) Ready to Drive With no Hands?

General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is planning to bring by 2017 hands-free driving on the highways in the form of a new Cadillac model, currently unknown. The company is also intending to develop Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure, which would allow the computers on board to communicate among each other to gain sensitive information about the particular portion of road they will be facing, stated Phil LeBeau in an interview on CNBC.

General Motors Company (NYSE:GM)’s innovation is called Super Cruise Control and it will be able to take full control of accelerating, steering and breaking at highway speeds of 70 miles an hour or in a traffic congestion following a repetitive stop-and-go pattern. The idea in not novel, many other automakers announced similar features for their cars to be produced. Mercedes-Benz announced that a S500 Intelligent Drive model will be released in 2020. Nissan Motor Co Ltd (ADR) (OTCMKTS:NSANY) also begun test-driving its autonomous Leaf prototype, which can be controlled with an iPad. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) will have to face fierce competition, probably, this is why the company plans to bring its product to the market by 2017.

Another issue to be addressed by all of these firms is safety. General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) will have to particularly show dedication and endurance as it already gained a notorious reputation for numerous recall issues.

“[…] There are still so many people who are buying the GM models, it’s still the number one brand in this country and it’s still the number two or three, depending on how you’re counting, model automaker in the world […],” stated Phil LeBeau.

Whether it’s because of the big number of models produced that there are so many forced to be recalled or due to technical gaps in the production, General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) is practically obligated to serve its customers well with this latest technology. Chances are that even minor errors in one of the sensors or in the software can escalate to tragic results.

Disclosure: none