GM Expands Autonomous Highway Driving to Gas Trucks and SUVs

• Autonomous highway driving expands from Escalade IQ to GM’s gas full-size SUVs and pickups.

• New Central Compute Unit offers 40 times more processing with 30% less wiring.

• One OnStar app replaces GM’s four brand apps and OnStar Guardian in 2027.

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General Motors announced today that autonomous highway driving, set to debut on the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ, will expand to its highest-volume gas-powered lineups, including full-size SUVs and light-duty pickups. The company shared the plan at GM Forward 2026, alongside details of the centralized computer behind the rollout.

GM first announced the eyes-off system last year with the Escalade IQ as its launch vehicle. Pre-production vehicles are now testing on closed courses.

One Central Computer With 40 Times the Processing Power

The expansion runs on GM’s next-generation electrical and compute architecture, built around a liquid-cooled Central Compute Unit (CCU) designed in-house. Perception, propulsion, active safety and chassis controls, which previously lived in separate modules, now share a single high-speed core.

GM’s figures, compared with its previous systems:

• About 40 times more computing power
• 30% less wiring length and mass
• Up to 50% faster cellular connectivity
• 36 times more data capacity, carried over high-speed Ethernet through zonal hubs that replace vehicle-spanning wiring harnesses

The architecture is propulsion-agnostic, so the same software foundation runs in a gas pickup or an electric SUV. GM says improvements validated on one model can reach the rest of the lineup through over-the-air updates, with no need to re-engineer each trim and body style.

After its 2028 debut on the Escalade IQ, the architecture spreads to GM’s highest-volume gas full-size SUVs and trucks, its three-row crossovers and its fourth-generation EVs, with the Chevrolet Silverado named among them. GM calls it “one of the industry’s largest multi-segment introductions of software-defined vehicles.”

1.9 Billion km of Super Cruise Data Behind the Push

Here’s where scale does the heavy lifting. GM points to more than 1.2 billion hands-free miles (about 1.9 billion km) driven by Super Cruise customers across nearly 750,000 vehicles. Hundreds of data-collection vehicles add roughly 1.6 million km of multisensor data each month.

Simulation covers far more ground. GM says its driving stack logs more than three billion virtual miles (about 4.8 billion km) per day, a volume it estimates would take about 2.5 million vehicles running around the clock to match on real roads.

The software also trains through self-play reinforcement learning: different versions of the driving software control both the test vehicle and the surrounding traffic, and scenarios get harder as the system improves. One GM clip shows the car steering around a giraffe lunging into its path. In Canada, swap the giraffe for a moose.

GM also lists newly developed ultra-high-resolution, low-cost radar as part of the hardware stack.

One OnStar App Replaces Five Apps in 2027

The intelligence push reaches owners’ phones, too. Starting in 2027, a new OnStar mobile app will replace OnStar Guardian and the separate Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC vehicle apps. For households with a Chevrolet and a GMC in the driveway, that means one app on the phone in place of two.

The app adds three main features:

• Connected Cameras: when the vehicle detects a trigger, such as an aggressive horn honk, onboard cameras record the event, upload it to the app and send the owner an alert
• OnStar Family: shared destinations, coordinated pickups and oversight of other vehicles in the household
• Proactive safety guidance: alerts built from vehicle signals, weather, road conditions and route information

GM says camera recordings are encrypted, carry time limits and can’t be accessed by GM itself. Every feature stays off until the owner opts in, and camera, microphone, location and AI permissions can be switched off at any time.

“Hey OnStar” Debuts on the 2027 Cadillac LYRIQ

The OnStar AI Assistant arrives first on the 2027 Cadillac LYRIQ through an over-the-air update in the coming months, with more GM vehicles to follow. Owners say “Hey OnStar” to adjust cabin temperature, open the glove box or charge port, check tire pressure, range or charging status, or ask what a specific warning light means.

In practice, the owner’s manual now answers out loud. GM says the assistant draws on live vehicle data and its own vehicle knowledge, and hands the conversation to a live OnStar advisor when a question calls for one. Those advisors handle more than 20 million calls a year in North America.

OnStar, now marking its 30th anniversary, counts more than 12 million subscribers across 22 markets.

Gen 4 EVs Gain About 20% More Range per kWh

The new architecture also anchors GM’s fourth-generation EV platform, which pairs it with lithium manganese rich (LMR) prismatic cells and a new drive unit family with 40% fewer parts. GM says the package delivers roughly 20% more range per kilowatt-hour than its current EVs.