Cadillac is feeling very confident about its Super Cruise semi-autonomous highway driving system. So confident that they just launched a pair of new 30-second “Let Go” (Ed. note: Get it?) ads during the VMAs. It’s part of their bigger “Dare Greatly” campaign and highlights the functionality of Super Cruise coming to the 2018 CT6.
Super Cruise is a clever piece of safety tech suite that allows fully hands-free highway driving—with a few exceptions. With Super Cruise, only times you need to put your hands on the wheel on the highway is for changing lanes, passing, and exiting. Cadillac has sensors on you making sure your eyes are still on the road, so you can’t just play on your phone while Super Cruise is on. The company claims it’s the world’s first true hands-free driving system for the highway, which probably doesn't make Elon Musk very happy.
In the one of the ads, we get a brief glimpse of a CT6 driving itself on the highway as the driver happily takes his hands off the wheel, interspersed with shots of other people taking some sort of unrelated risk. It's slightly mixed messaging if we're being honest, as getting a bold new haircut isn't quite analogous to entrusting a semi-autonomous car with your life.
We get a better look at Super Cruise with the second ad, where we see a man merging onto the highway with what looks like a very animated passenger sitting just out of frame. Once the Cadillac is on the highway, the driver turns on Super Cruise it's revealed that both people are using American Sign Language to have a conversation. As our man Alex Roy points out on Twitter, the ASL luxury car market is a pretty narrow one, but it’s a great ad nonetheless.
This all might not sound like a huge deal considering Super Cruise was first announced by Cadillac back in April, but to introduce it in an ad campaign during a big, televised event like the VMAs is a bold, risky move. No other car company has advertised such technology. Every time there’s an accident involving Tesla’s Autopilot, we hear another statement by Tesla saying you still need to have your hands on the wheel while Autopilot is on. Cadillac, on the other hand, is telling you quite directly that with Super Cruise, you can #LetGo.