Hasta La Gadget!

This week the folks at Motor Trend have unveiled their 2014 Car of the Year award as going to the 2014 Cadillac CTS. This award works with a variety of vehicles, open to any “all-new” or otherwise substantially upgraded 2014 model car – including 22 models and seven finalists up for battle this year. The […]

Cadillac has taken the wraps off its 2015 Escalade luxury SUV, showing off a new design — most of which takes place in the interior — as well as some changes to the body itself and a new engine under the hood. The vehicle is slated to go into production in spring of 2014 in […]

Cadillac’s first 2014 ELR hybrids have been snapped leaving the production line, though the “range-extended” car itself still isn’t expected to arrive in showrooms until early in the new year. The initial ELR cars – which borrow much of their mechanical and technological magic from the Chevrolet Volt, but wrap it up in a coupe shell with various luxury extras – are destined for further testing, similar to the cold-weather conditions tests GM put the ELR through back in February.

The photos, shared by GM, were taken at the car company’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant this week, where various Chevy and Cadillac race drivers had been invited to watch the first ELR models be completed. Among the guests was Team Chevy IndyCar driver Simona De Silvestro, shown in the photo below.

Cadillac’s goal with the ELR is to ween its luxury customers off of their big gas engines as well as lure a younger audience onto the forecourt. Outwardly based on the 2011 Converj concept, under the skin there’s a 1.4-liter four-cylinder gas engine that’s used solely to recharge the ELR’s batteries, rather than to actively drive the wheels.

“Cadillac ELR pre-production vehicles will be used to validate manufacturing, engineering and other quality measures before production vehicles are assembled at the end of the year for sale in 2014″ GM

Drive itself is provided by the electric motors, and Cadillac says the ELR will run for up to 35 miles on a full charge. However, with a full tank of gas, the coupe can manage in excess of 300 miles, the company claims.

Interestingly, GM leaves gearchanges to the ELR’s digital brain, and instead puts the driver in charge of regenerative efficiency. The steering wheel paddles, rather than flitting through ratios, actually adjust how much of the car’s momentum is converted back into power for the batteries. Dubbed “Regen on Demand”, when the driver takes their foot off of the accelerator and pulls one of the paddles there’s a downshift-style jump in deceleration, with the resistance of the electric motors turning speed into a useful power top-up.

That works in tandem with the regenerative braking system, which also converts momentum to electricity when the driver hits the brakes. However, Cadillac expects Regen on Demand to be more popular with sportier drivers, given it allows the ELR to shed speed more rapidly, build up a boost of energy, and keep their foot close to the accelerator, all at the same time.

VIA: Autoblog

Cadillac’s first 2014 ELR pulls off production line (but it’s not for showrooms) is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Cadillac has long been a brand associated with luxury and sophistication, but it was also long thought of as the car your father – or your grandfather – might drive. Well I’m here to tell you that has definitely changed. I recently had the opportunity to put the 2013 Cadillac ATS to the test for a full week, and not only is it an excellent vehicle, it can be packed with all of the high-tech goodies that gadget geeks like you and I want in a car.

I won’t spend too much time talking about the car’s performance and styling – my focus will be on the technology inside the ATS. However, I will tell you that the ATS is one good looking car, with modern and agressive body styling, and a comfortable and luxurious interior. The all-wheel-drive, direct-injected 2.0L turbo model that I drove had plenty of punch (272 horses and 260 lb.-ft. of torque to be exact), while maintaining a consistent 25 MPG fuel economy combined across highway and city driving. The car handled like a dream – especially when I put it into “Sport” mode, which tightens up the steering and suspension so you feel in control of every move. It’s this incredibly solid handling along with a punchy little engine that makes this truly a driver’s car. Despite its zippy and sporty performance, it offered an exceptionally quiet ride.

The model I tested was loaded with tech features, with Cadillac’s vaunted CUE (Cadillac User Experience) system at the center of it all. This provides a centralized control panel for audio, navigation, climate, and other vehicle preferences. The system uses a pair of displays – a 8-inch multitouch display that’s the main controller, and a small 5.7-inch display that’s located in the instrument panel behind the steering wheel. Sound for the system is provided by a powerful Bose surround sound system.

In addition to the touchscreen, there are a number of touch-sensitive chromed “buttons” beneath the main display, providing quick access to power, volume, climate, and CUE’s Home screen. While neither the chromed buttons nor the touchscreen provide the physical “click” that you might find in traditional controls, CUE includes a haptic feedback which provides a gentle “thump” sensation to confirm your finger presses.

CUE itself provides a very clean and simple interface which should be familiar to anyone who uses a tablet or a smartphone. Its Home screen offers icons for Audio, Navigation, Phone, Settings, Climate, and OnStar. While there is room on the Home screen for a couple more icons, GM was smart to place a couple of icons on a second page for Pandora and Weather apps, so you get used to the swipe gesture to change pages. You can always drag and drop the icons around if you want to reconfigure them.

The arrow icon at the bottom right of the screen pops up a handy list of your favorite audio presets, which can be from any of the different sources, including Sirius/XM, AM, or FM. You can also pull up on this bottom menu to access more than five presets at a time. The CUE touchscreen also has proximity sensors, which turn on the menus at the top and bottom of the screen only when your hand is nearby. When you move your hand away, the screen displays only the most relevant information, greatly simplifying the displayed information.

One of my favorite features in Audio mode is the “Browse” screen. This lets you quickly swipe through the list of hundreds of radio stations, and tap directly to the one you’d like – just like using the Contacts list on a smartphone.

CUE also offers all of the requisite tech features you’d expect in a modern vehicle, including voice-based turn-by-turn GPS navigation, and Bluetooth integrated hands-free calling. Both of these features worked effortlessly for me in my tests, but being such utilitarian features, didn’t really surprise me in any way. It also offers “Natural Voice Recognition” for hands-free operation, which definitely is more intuitive than having to remember things like whether to say “Call” or “Dial” on other voice-based systems.

I mentioned before that CUE also offers Pandora support, and it provides a truly integrated experience, with album art, thumbs-up/down, bookmarking, and direct access to all of your mixes. Keep in mind that this only works over Bluetooth with Android and Blackberry devices, and iOS users will need to plug into the USB port in order to take advantage of the Pandora app.

There’s also a Weather app which provides quick access to current and forecast information, and Cadillac is expecting more applications down the road, after it announced an app developer program and SDK back at CES this past January.

I will say that it took a little getting used to the touch-only CUE interface, but once you realize that you can use standard gestures like swipe and pinch-zoom (which is really handy on the nav interface), it’s quite a nice setup. That said, I would still like to have physical buttons below the CUE display instead of the touch sensitive metal ones. I’d also like to see hard buttons for the major functions like Audio, Nav and Phone so I could quickly change between these without taking my eyes off the road. One other thing to note is that both the screen of the CUE and the glossy surfaces in the center console of the ATS are major fingerprint and dust magnets. Fortunately, Cadillac was kind enough to include a little gift in the glove box…

In addition to the touchscreen, CUE offers a set of handy steering wheel controls which quick access to many functions, including volume, track and even access to settings directly in front of you on the 5.7-inch widescreen dashboard display. You can even use the joystick-style controller on the right side of the steering wheel to customize what information is shown on the dash, such as a compass, fuel range, MPG info, or even a trip timer.

Another whiz-bang feature in the ATS I drove is the Forward Collision Alert system. This automatically can detect if you’re in imminent danger of rear-ending a vehicle in front of you, flashing a bright red LED heads-up indicator on the windshield, while simultaneously vibrating the driver’s seat.

This is part of the optional Driver Awareness Package which uses the same vibration feedback to alert you if you should stray from your lane while driving, or if you’re getting too close to an object while parking. The seat is pretty nifty tech, because it actually vibrates in different locations depending on if its a general alert, or if the hazard is to the left or right. This is a much better – and less annoying – feedback mechanism than I’ve seen in other vehicular warning systems. Plus, it’s like a free butt massage when it triggers, so how can that be bad?

My car also came equipped with two features which are great to have if you live in a cold place like here in Chicago. Both passenger and driver’s seats came with three-level heating, but perhaps my favorite little surprise feature was the heated steering wheel. Yes. See that button next to the orange light on the steering wheel above? Just press it, and your cold hands will be in heaven in under a minute. Not that it’s a rational thought at all, but I think the government should make this mandatory equipment on all cars that drive in temperatures below 40 degrees.

The ATS also comes with 12 months of OnStar service, which includes driving directions, operator assistance, automatic crash response, and remote lock/unlock and start capabilities via the OnStar RemoteLink smartphone app.

Other high-tech features aboard the ATS include keyless ignition and locks, a rear backup camera, complete with lines that indicate wheel trajectory, electric windows, locks, and electric driver’s and passenger seats. It’s also got universal home remote capability for controlling your garage door opener.

Technophiles looking to fully outfit the ATS can also opt for Adaptive Cruise Control – which maintains a pre-set distance between you and other drivers, a configurable Heads-Up full color display, and even Adaptive Forward Lighting, which swivels the cars headlights to cast their beams in the precise direction of your steering. Cadillac also offers optional LED accent lighting on the front of the car, and LED interior accent lighting is standard.

Overall, the 2013 Cadillac ATS is quite a desirable vehicle. It’s luxurious, comfortable, sporty and packed with technology (especially when fully-outfitted), and a car that I would be happy to be seen driving down the road. The CUE system does offer some innovations when compared to other technology packages, and it’s only in its first generation. Since Cadillac is promising that the system is software-upgradeable, I can imagine that CUE will only improve over time.

Base price for the 2013 Cadillac ATS starts at $33,095 (USD) for the RWD, 2.5L 4 cylinder model, and prices go all the way up to $55,005 for a top-of-the-line version with a powerful 3.6L V6. As equipped, the ATS 4WD 2.0L Turbo version I tested had a base price of $41,395. The addition of CUE, the Advanced Security Package, Driver Awareness Package, 18″ Aluminum wheels, the Cold Weather Package, and destination charge brought the final sticker price up to $46,275.

Disclosure: Cadillac provided the loan of the car for review in this article. However, all reviews are the unbiased views of our editorial staff, and we will only recommend products or services we have used personally, and believe will be good for our readers.

Once upon a time, your car had to be the fastest or the most luxurious if you wanted to stand out. Now, as GM has discovered, a car has to be talkative if tech-savvy drivers are to take them seriously. A path that started with OnStar has ended up with cars that talk to your smartphone and tablet, quietly plan their own servicing, and generally take the sting out of owning and maintaining a modern vehicle. SlashGear sat down with GM President of General Motors North America Mark Reuss to talk infotainment and how the company is betting on more than just top speed for models like the new 2014 Cadillac CTS.

We’re no strangers to GM’s in-car tech. The company announced earlier this year that it would be equipping all of its models with in-car LTE, and promptly showed off a demo of what you could do when your 4G connection is actually baked into the car’s electronics, rather than just a dumb mobile hotspot in the glovebox. We also played extensively with Cadillac CUE, the infotainment system built into the 2013 ATS, last year.

GM isn’t a late entrant to the infotainment market, however, and gambles like baking expensive LTE radios into every single model aren’t exactly new. “If you look at our history, we’ve long had OnStar as an asset” GM President Mark Reuss told us. “So I think bringing that demonstrates the commitment we’ve made. There were a lot of tough times at the company when we looked at the equipment that we put in to do that, and generally did not price for. So that’s generally a long-term financial commitment to what we think we’re now being able to look at: an amazing opportunity for us for 4G, the expansion of that pipe we’ve invested in.”

In fact, Reuss argues, car connectivity and the functionality that enables could well end up being the 21st century’s equivalent of extreme customization. “If you look at how people use their cars, if you look at the changing demographics, new people coming into the car-buying market, most of those people have sort of an “ultimate customization” available, they see all the different devices available today” he pointed out. “That’s a reflection of who you are, that’s a reflection of how you live … it’s almost like hot-rodding used to be, right, sort of like that type of creativity that you have. It’s very low-cost, it’s very fun.”

Examples of that flexibility GM has already demonstrated range from remotely setting LED color schemes and cabin temperature, monitoring fuel levels and economy from across the country, and turning your car into a Skype video conferencing suite. However, Reuss says, the key is minimizing the stress involved in owning a car.

“That attention and care is now delivered through the pipe of the car, because the car is now bringing that information back to both the dealer, our engineers, and us as an OEM, and that’s really important data to us from a safety standpoint, and it’s important to the customer” Reuss says. “It takes the challenge of thinking about “when’s my oil going to be changed?” and “when are my tires going to be rotated?”; it takes that away from your busy life. And these are big, big things because the world is not getting less complex, and these type of tools in fact can make your daily life less complex.”

Still, it’s a big investment to web-enable every car you produce, especially when only part of your audience might walk into the showroom with an understanding of cutting-edge informatics. According to Reuss, GM has tackled that in how it markets each system across each of its brands, picking out the key functionality it knows potential drivers are going to be most interested in, as well as able to afford.

At the budget end, for instance, there are models like the Chevy Spark, aimed at younger drivers who are particularly smartphone-savvy. “You see widely different approaches in GM in how we’re doing this” Reuss points out. “The reason for purchase in a Spark of the screen we have in the car, the bring-your-own-media, don’t underestimate that. This is a car that’s under $13,000 … so that car in that price point is one approach to connectivity and bring-your-own-media, that replicates basically what you have on your phone in a very simple way, a fun way.”

On the other end of the spectrum is Cadillac’s CUE, which doesn’t assume the driver will necessarily be coming to the car with a pocket or bag full of the latest phones and slates. Instead, Reuss says, “the CUE system embeds more of that technology into the car, into the center stack of the car.”

For Cadillac drivers, the appeal of a system like CUE might not be its streaming media capabilities but how it unlocks new safety and convenience features: tech that builds on the same underlying informatics hooked into the car, but delivers that access and data in differently focused ways. “The price point is wildly different,” Reuss concedes, “but that type of information, integration, safety systems, crash avoidance, automatic cruise-control, radar-detected cruise control: that data and that format in the car you’ll see on the most expensive models in the range. And it replicates a lot of the function of what a tablet, or a smartphone, would do for you on a use-basis.”

The next example of that growing technological focus inside and outside of the car comes in the shape of the new 2014 Cadillac CTS, the company’s latest sports sedan. Set to hit the road later this year, the CTS builds on the excellent example of last year’s Cadillac ATS, borrowing the expansive all-digital driver instrumentation from the more expensive XTS, and cladding it in a sharp suit with echoes of the eye-catching 2014 Corvette Stingray.

On the outside, that design language expresses itself in features like the daytime running lights, extending down from the main lamp cluster and under the bumper. Like on the new Corvette, GM has worked hard to diffuse the LEDs so that they illuminate as two solid strakes of light; that, director of Cadillac exterior design Bob Bonaface tells us, gives the whole family a recognizable face, and one which you can spot no matter whether it’s day or night.

It’s arguably on the inside that the technological and materials focus is most obvious. Just as the Corvette team strove to be “authentic” in their choice of finishes – opting for real carbon-fiber, real metal, real leather rather than cheaper lookalike alternatives – so the new CTS dresses its cabin in premium materials. Eight interior finishes will be offered, ranging from the more traditional black, tan, and brown leather, through to more eye-catching shades like blue, each with optional contrast stitching. Real carbon-fiber and aluminum also show up again, joined by open-pore and natural finish wood.

The center stack has the same zero-profile touch sensitive buttons, topped by an 8-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen with anti-gloss and oleophobic coatings, as we saw in the Cadillac ATS last year. However, the ATS’s LCD sub display in the driver’s binnacle has been replaced with a huge, 12-inch 1280 x 480 cluster display, capable of showing multiple instrument layouts and even 3D graphics of the car which can be scrolled through using wheel-mounted controls. It’s all driven by a tri-core ARM11 processor running Cadillac’s proprietary Linux OS.

The only visible sign of that underlying tech that GM wants drivers to see, though, is a smooth and responsive interface. It’s still a work-in-progress, Reuss tells us, but it’s one the car company is committed to: making its car’s controls just as tactile and efficient as analog would be, while also having the flexibility benefits being digital brings. “Things we’re working on to make them perfect is the feedback and latency of something so simple as a volume control,” he says, “so we’ll work to perfect that, but the use and layout of it is spot-on, so we’re committed to that.”

If the proof of the pudding is in the eating (or, in this case, how many drivers aren’t punching their dashboards in confusion), the GM President says the response – even from those who might traditionally be considered more tech-averse – has been positive. “While the demographic for Cadillac may not be the very youngest car-buying population, our population is currently changed by the use of those devices no matter what your generation is” he argues. “You immediately understand what [CUE] is and how to use it, so we’ve had very little feedback that that’s a problem; very little from the CUE system in both the XTS and ATS.”

Next up is third party developers wading in, as GM throws open its In-Vehicle APIs and invites coders to cook up new functionality and features based on having core access to the infotainment stack. Alongside that, there’s an official plan for “agility and capability” over the next decade, Reuss says, though he also points out that consumer demands more than anything might well shape what car dashboards look like and deliver in tomorrow’s models.

“I don’t know how it’s going to evolve, and that’s exciting to me” Reuss concluded. “It’s sort of an open world of possibilities for it, and our job is to provide those open world of possibilities enabling people’s lives to be easier, to provide new advantages to buy a GM car, and to provide a user-interface that’s extremely safe, and easy to use, and very consistent.”

Smart Wheels: We talk Infotainment & the 2014 CTS with GM’s Mark Reuss is written by Vincent Nguyen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.